'Change management is key' for maintaining remote cybersecurity

In a preview of his panel at the HIMSS Cybersecurity Forum, Franciscan Health Vice President of Digital Innovation and Applications Sri Bharadwaj says threat factors have substantially increased amid COVID-19.

"If you look at where we are today from a security perspective, what we've seen is that our threat factors have substantially increased," Sri Bharadwaj, vice president of digital innovation and applications at Franciscan Health, said in an interview with Healthcare IT News. "We've deployed a lot of tools, but the people needed to manage the data from those tools are not there," Bharadwaj said. "When patients come into the hospital, we are managing the environment," he said. Doing so, as Bharadwaj has previously discussed, raises challenges about securing, managing and maintaining connected devices. To begin addressing such concerns, he said, "Change management is key – not just with the physician, but with the patient too."   Meanwhile, on the physician side, Bharadwaj said a clinician should try to create an environment with few distractions.