Mission
The UC San Diego Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity is a multidisciplinary data-driven research, education, and advocacy program focused on multiple key areas in the healthcare cybersecurity domain.
By combining the deep clinical knowledge of practicing physicians with the technical expertise of computer science, economics, bioengineering, and political science faculty, we conceptualize, design, and execute impactful projects, events, and campaigns which address relevant questions and produce data, recommendations, and insight that can be used by healthcare delivery organizations, medical device manufacturers, cybersecurity enterprise, and regulators and policymakers to make patient care safer and more secure.
Healthcare Ransomware Resiliency and Response Program (H-R3P)
H-R3P seeks to develop evidence-based interventions to reduce the impact of cyberattacks on health care delivery organizations (HDOs) by identifying ransomware incidents, understanding the impacts with respect to disruption on acute clinical workflows, and deploying substitute systems during a ransomware emergency. H-R3P's goal is to develop clinician-focused tools and techniques for improving capacity for and quality of care during cyberattacks.
LEARN MORE ABOUT ARPA-H DIGIHEALS INITIATIVE
Current Research Initiatives Include:
- Developing best practices for the secure deployment and maintenance of cloud infrastructure in healthcare operational workflows
- Identifying critical patient safety impacts in the setting of ransomware attacks, and developing clinically oriented incident response plans
- Discovering methodologies for rapid identification of hospitals affected by ransomware relying on passive, publicly available signals
- Designing rapidly deployable emergency downtime technology platforms that can restore patient safety and business continuity functionality while augmenting paper workflows
- Creating rigorously constructed controlled trials which validate the impact of commonly accepted cybersecurity pratices like phishing training and multifactor authentication
- Developing and validating didactic curricula for both health science students and computer science students to develop both a healthcare-engaged technical workforce and cybersecurity literate clinician population
- Performing medical device cybersecurity research, including penetration testing and vulnerability analysis as well as software bill of materials evaluation
- Assessing economic and operational impacts of proposed healthcare cybersecurity regulation and policy, particularly devising cost estimates for commonly recommended minimum cybersecurity standards or controls
- Developing simulated environments and exercises for both the deployment and subsequent evaluation of platforms and devices as well as clinical training of cybersecurity concepts and practices