Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1169964
66 CIO / HEALTH IT Hackers demand more than $1M in bitcoin from Washington hospital By Jackie Drees A berdeen, Wash.-based Grays Harbor Community Hospital notified about 85,000 patients Aug. 14 of a June 15 ransomware attack on its systems that may have exposed patients' personal and medical information, Daily World reported. Patients of the hosptial's subsidiary Grays Har- bor Medical Group, which comprises eight clinics in the Abderdeen and Hoquiam, Wash. area, were also notified of the breach. While the hospital did not find evidence of any in- formation being accessed or shared by the hackers, officials have mailed letters to affect- ed patients as "a matter of caution," according to the report. e hackers likely gained access to the hospi- tal's information systems through a phishing email attempt, which allowed the unauthorized party to infect the system with ransomware, Grays Harbor Community Hospital CEO Tom Jensen told Daily World. For the ransom, the hackers demanded the equivalent to $1 million in bitcoin, Mr. Jensen said. e hospital's main system for managing pa- tient information was not affected by the ransomware because it is older; however, the malware was effective at the medical clinics, which have resorted to using paper records for patients' health information. As of Aug. 13, the hospital has not regained access to the missing records, Mr. Jensen said. Grays Harbor Community Hospital is in the process of a full forensic review, and the hos- pital is offering free credit monitoring to any individuals affected by the security breach. e hospital plans to implement upgrades to secu- rity, soware, hardware and employee training. "Hospitals nationwide are under attack from these faceless criminals," Mr. Jensen said, according to the report. "As with many other organizations, we thought we were well pre- pared, and we were still victimized. We are proud of the efforts of our providers and staff continuing the same level of excellent patient care during this setback." n Viewpoint: AI is incompatible with the real-world practice of medicine By Andrea Park T hough some artificial intelligence algorithms developed for use in healthcare have advanced to the point of outperforming clinicians, they still lack the fundamental ability to interpret clinical data as only humans can. Because of this, according to a recent commentary in The Lancet, AI can cer- tainly play an invaluable role in patient care, but it is ill-equipped to analyze patient data to identify anything other than a specific, immediate issue, the parameters of which must be explicitly defined when building each algorithm. The op-ed's authors — comprising researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., among others — described three technical challenges associated with the use of AI in healthcare: 1. Clinical data is messy: Data found in EHRs, medical histories and oth- er patient records are often disorganized, incomplete and prone to bias. Though human clinicians can typically correctly interpret this data based on their past interactions with a patient, algorithms are unable to make assumptions without sufficient data to back them up. 2. Algorithms cannot account for the unknown: Other analytical issues arise when real-world data differs from the data upon which an AI model was trained, such as when an algorithm trained on data from an urban hos- pital is applied to a rural setting, or when a new disease outbreak occurs. 3. Medical practices are far from objective: Not only do clinicians use a multitude of labels and wording to describe the same conditions, but they also rely heavily on human judgment to diagnose those conditions — a level of subjectivity that would be nearly impossible to program into every single AI algorithm. n UCHealth launches conversational AI-powered virtual assistant for Amazon Echo By Andrea Park U CHealth launched a skill for the Amazon Echo that allows users to ask the Aurora, Colo.-based system's virtual assistant, Livi, for infor- mation about health conditions and hospital services. Livi is powered by conversational artificial intelligence that enables her to respond to requests for locations and contact information of nearby hos- pitals and physicians, and educate users about specific health conditions. Eventually, Livi will also offer updates about weather, sports and other local details. Livi's conversational AI will grow smarter with each use, according to UCHealth CIO Steve Hess, but the HIPAA-compliant tool will not offer diagnoses or professional advice. After adding the skill, Echo users can access Livi by saying, "Alexa, ask UCHealth." The resource is currently being tested on Google Assistant-en- abled devices, and is in the process of being integrated into UCHealth's EMR system and mobile app, where Livi will be able to direct patients to- ward appointment information, test results and other health data. n