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I’m getting some push back on LinkedIn on my articles on banning Microsoft Windows from medical devices that are installed in hospitals – read more about why Windows is a bad idea for medical devices here and here. Scott Caldwell tells us that the FDA doesn’t rule “out” or “in” any particular technology, including Windows …

Ethical breaches or data breaches. I was standing in line at Ben Gurion airport, waiting for my bag to be x-rayed. A conversation started with a woman standing next to me in line. The usual sort – “Where are you traveling and what kind of work do you do?”. I replied that I was traveling …

In a previous post The Microsoft Monoculture as a threat to national security, I suggested that the FDA might consider banning Windows as an operating system platform for medical devices and their accompanying information management systems. One of my readers took umbrage at the notion of legislating one monoculture (Microsoft) with another (Linux) and how …

Medical devices are everywhere today.  In your doctors office measuring your blood pressure, at your cosmetician (for hip reduction…) and in the hospital for everything from patient monitoring to robot-assisted surgery. The people that develop embedded medical devices based on Intel platforms know that Windows is vulnerable. Lacking embedded Linux know-how, medical device developers often …

It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun and that every generation forgets or never learned the hard-earned lessons from the spilled blood of the previous generation. Reviewing the security and compliance issues  of a new mobile medical device recently, I was struck by how familiar many of the themes are. …

Hot spots for medical device software security I think that 2011 is going to be an exciting year for medical device security as the FDA gets more involved in the approval and clearance process with software-intensive medical device vendors. Considering how much data is exchanged between medical devices and customer service centers/care givers/primary clinical care teams and …