| | | | |  | | By Erin Schumaker, Carmen Paun, Daniel Payne and Ruth Reader | | | | | 
Hackers have ransomed a growing number of health care companies. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images | The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health is investing in cybersecurity weeks after a devastating attack at the payment processor Change Healthcare slowed billing across the industry. ARPA-H, the agency President Joe Biden created two years ago to invest in high-risk, high-reward research, plans to spend $50 million on proposals to develop IT tools to protect hospitals and health care systems. ARPA-H announced the program, Universal Patching and Remediation for Autonomous Defense, on Monday. "Health isn’t just something that impacts an individual, and ARPA-H is investing in ways to build stronger, healthier, and more resilient health care systems that can sustain themselves between crises," ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn said in a statement. The goal, according to Andrew Carney, the program manager, is to guarantee hospital software and devices are safe and functional so doctors can focus on their real job: caring for patients. Why it matters: The attack on Change Healthcare was part of a growing trend, as POLITICO’s Chelsea Cirruzzo and Ben Leonard have reported. Reports of large breaches rose 141 percent between 2022 and 2023, while ransomware attacks spiked 264 percent over five years, according to the HHS Office for Civil Rights. Even brief disruptions to hospital IT systems can hurt patients. Hospitals have critical infrastructure, including internet-connected devices patients rely on to keep them alive. Updating software can take a long time since health care systems often have a lot of internet-connected devices, limited IT resources and may be reluctant to take health care devices offline to test and fix them. "It’s particularly challenging to model all the complexities of the software systems used in a given health care facility, and this limitation can leave hospitals and clinics uniquely open to ransomware attacks," Carney said in a statement. What's next? ARPA-H seeks proposals in several technical areas: vulnerability mitigation software, “digital twins” of hospital equipment and software to automatically detect cybersecurity threats and deploy defenses against them. A virtual proposer’s day to learn about the program and share feedback is June 20.
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Washington, D.C. | Shawn Zeller/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. It's no secret that highly processed foods are bad for us, but some are worse than others. A review by Harvard researchers found eating a lot of processed meat was most strongly associated with an early death. Sweet drinks, ice cream, and sugary cereal are also best consumed in moderation or not at all. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  An expert report out of Europe says AI could pose dangers to patients. | Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images | There is still no good way to test the riskiest artificial intelligence models, according to an International AI Safety Report written by specialists in the technology from 30 countries, our Tom Bristow reports from London. Many of AI’s riskiest uses are in health care, the report says, warning of dangers to patients from: — Biased diagnostic tools — Identity thieves who can mine AI models for the patient data they’re trained on — Market concentration that’s likely to follow the widespread rollout of AI tools, posing risks if systems go down with no backup options at the ready — Insurers who use AI tools to cut costs or raise prices The report, released Friday, said current safety testing has significant limitations. “No existing techniques currently provide quantitative guarantees about the safety of advanced general-purpose AI models or systems,” it concludes. “Developers still understand little about how their general-purpose AI models operate.” The report also criticizes AI developers for not giving outside safety testers enough access. What’s next? Britain’s top technology minister, Michelle Donelan, said the report would play a “substantial role” at a global summit on AI that began today in Seoul.
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A more dangerous mpox strain is taking lives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | CDC/AP | The U.S. is helping the Democratic Republic of the Congo stem its mpox outbreak while preparing for potential spread domestically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined in a recent report the steps it’s taking as an outbreak in the DRC, where the disease is endemic, forebodes a repeat of the global mpox outbreak of 2022 — but with a deadlier variant. What’s happening? The DRC has reported some 20,000 mpox cases and nearly a thousand deaths since January 2023. The outbreak that swept the world in 2022 killed 184. Most cases in the DRC are in children under 15, according to the CDC report. The vaccines used in the U.S. and elsewhere during the 2022 outbreak haven’t yet been licensed in the DRC, but the country’s government plans to introduce them. However, only Japan has approved the vaccine LC16m8 for use in children, while Jynneos, the shot used in the U.S. and Europe, is only approved for adults. Other factors complicating the response in the DRC are: — The different groups affected by the outbreak, children in some parts of the country and adults in other parts — Varied types of transmission: from animals to people, among family members or through sexual contact By contrast, the global outbreak two years ago was mostly among gay and bisexual men and sex workers, making it easier to target the population that needed to be vaccinated. What the U.S. is doing: Providing funding and technical assistance and sending specialists to the DRC to help with the outbreak response. And while no cases of the deadlier variant have been reported in the U.S., the CDC encouraged continued vaccination. In a small online survey of 100 U.S. care providers, the CDC found that most wanted to be better prepared. The CDC said it has published testing and reporting information online and updated health care providers and state and local health departments about testing and preparedness. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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