ARPA-H awards research contracts to advance health data security

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) recently awarded $50 million in funding for six research projects to advance technologies that could help secure health care data. These include automated medical device patching, ransomware intervention, cognitive health assistants for better data organization, cyber reasoning techniques, and electronic health record consolidation. 

"These projects will seek to develop technologies that can address current gaps in cybersecurity for health care systems across the country, ensuring patients continue to receive care in the wake of a medical facility cyberattack,” said ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn.

John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk, said, “We applaud the administration’s recognition that the current paradigm of health care constantly trying to protect, through available means, the accelerated expansion of insecure third-party technology in our environments is not sustainable and is a losing battle. We need a fresh approach. We hope this scientific initiative will lead to the development of new cybersecurity technologies that will help us more effectively prevent and respond to the ever-increasing wave of sophisticated cyberattacks in health care — to help protect patients.” 

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.