Database Searches
Database: BioMed Central
Search terms: Implant AND heart AND security.
Number of results: 161
Limiters: None. All articles on this database are peer reviewed.
Subject terms: Does not list
Argaw, S.T., Troncoso-Pastoriza, J.R., Lacey, D. Florin M., Calcavecchia, F. Anderson D., Burleson W., Vogel J., O’Leary C., Eshaya-Chauvin B., Flahault A. (2020, July 3). Cybersecurity of Hospitals: discussing the challenges and working towards mitigating the risks. BMC Med Inform. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-020-01161-7
It is useful that all listed research is peer reviewed in this database, however I did have to dig to find a good article, so the usefulness of this search may be limited. Another note, for some reason this search resulted in a quantity of retracted article placeholders, something also detrimental to my searching.
Database: MEDLINE
Search terms: implant and security.
Number of results: 29
Limiters: Full-text, Peer-reviewed
Subject Terms:
Computer Communication Networks
Computer Security
Equipment and Supplies
Prostheses and Implants
Department of Computer Science, Dankook University (2014, July 24). Security Mechanism Based on Hospital Authentication Server for Secure Application of Implantable Medical Devices. BioMed research international. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/543051
Most of the results were of no use to me, but there were a few that stuck out as quite useful. I’d call this a middle of the road in terms of usefulness.
Additional search terms:
Search terms: cybersecurity and healthcare and medicine.
Number of results: 91
Limiters: Full-text, Peer-reviewed
Fairly useful, but not specific enough.
Search terms: implant and cybersecurity.
Number of results: 1
Limiters: Full-text, Peer-reviewed
Useful for refining what I wanted to search.
Database: Consumer Health Complete – EBSCOhost
Search terms: Implant AND Security.
Number of results: 169
Limiters: Full-Text.
Subject Terms:
CARDIAC pacemakers
ARTIFICIAL organs
CONFLICT of interests
ELECTRONIC security systems
PROPRIETARY health facilities
MEDICAL policy
GOVERNMENT regulation
SOFTWARE architecture
ETHICS
STANDARDS
Hutchison, K., Sparrow, R. (2016, December). What Pacemakers Can Teach Us about the Ethics of Maintaining Artificial Organs. Hastings Center Report. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.644
Surprising from the number of results, I found a lot of good articles right at the top of the search. I will reuse this database in the future.
Annotation on What Pacemakers Can Teach Us about the Ethics of Maintaining Artificial Organs:
This article serves as a call to action for medical providers, hospitals, and governmental organizations to investigate the authors’ ethical concerns concerning the future of implantable medical devices. It starts by defining what implantable medical devices are, then describes the advancement in replicating human organs as permanent parts of a person stating that that is the final goal for medical implants. Because we haven’t reached that goal, the article mainly concerns itself with implants that need eventual maintenance, specifically cardiac pacemakers.
First, the dilemmas that arise with having a mechanical device implanted inside oneself are discussed. Next, the issues of how the complexity of care is increased for people with pacemakers are discussed. The discussion covers communication between doctors and people with technical knowledge of how pacemakers work, doctors other than the ones who installed the pacemaker taking responsibility for the patient, and quality of care changing based on the patient’s location. Third, the weaknesses of pacemaker software are discussed, followed by a discussion of the potential for current pacemakers becoming obsolete and unreplaceable. Before summarizing the issues discussed and listing some anticipatory problems that may arise, there is a discussion of how pacemakers, as a product, may be influenced by market forces, and how that may impact what kind of pacemakers and how fast a patient may receive their pacemaker.
While not fully dedicating itself to investigating the role of cybersecurity in implants, this paper goes in-depth with the ethical issues with implants. These ethical concerns may play a role in the future of the security of implants. This source is somewhat biased in favor of increased security for implants, but I don’t see that affecting the quality of the research. The goal of the source and my goal are in many ways similar; we both seek to advance consideration of how the future of implants could look.
This source fits more with my topic than others I’ve listed in the past, and I may add an addendum to my final project that considers the ethical concerns about implants based on what it says. Overall I think that adding this to my bibliography will be beneficial to my future work.