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+--- Thread: Implanted devices are the future of medicine, but they’re vulnerable to hackers (/thread-9386.html)
Implanted devices are the future of medicine, but they’re vulnerable to hackers - C C - Nov 18, 2020
https://futurehuman.medium.com/implanted-devices-are-the-future-of-medicine-but-theyre-vulnerable-to-hackers-26e61dcf4c29
EXCERPTS: The collision of technology and medicine has resulted in the future that early science fiction writers dreamed of: One where electronic medical devices are implanted into the body, making people truly bionic. [...] In a moving feature for OneZero, writer Jameson Rich wrote about his experience living with one of these devices. Rich has a heart implant known as an implanted cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, which helps him manage his arrhythmias — irregularities in his heartbeat. ICDs are connected to the internet of things, allowing physicians to monitor their patients remotely.
Some of them are vulnerable to hackers, as Rich learned days before receiving his. He got it anyway, and now he’s living with the consequences. “But it’s hardly just the threat of hacking that worries me,” he writes. “It’s a feeling instead of living as a guinea pig for an opaque set of private interests, and a feeling that I can’t trust an industry that would ever put unsecure devices inside patients in the first place...” (Read his story here)