Fireside chat with Liam Woods, Director of Acute Operations at HSE Ireland

Liam Woods is HSE National Director of the Acute Hospitals Division. The Division works closely with the Hospital Groups to deliver hospital services across Ireland. One of the priorities of the Division is improving hospital waiting times by ensuring that the Hospital Groups are fully operational, strengthening their financial accountability, human resource planning and overall performance, and continuing the development of the new Children's Hospital. In this interview, filmed during the last PANACEA GA meeting in Dublin, last January, Director Liam Woods tells us about the major challenges faced by healthcare organisations in terms of cybersecurity and how PANACEA can help. Cyberattacks in Irish hospitals and in the Irish health system are increasing. A recent cyber-attack on to a laboratory system forced the unit to take the lab offline, and they coudln't access patients' results for a period of three days, having to rebuild the entire system as a result. This is just one example of how challenging cyber-attacks can be for an hospital, and therefore HSE is currently investing in cybersecurity. PANACEA Research is working on technologies, human factors and processes, which is critical when we think of how many doctors, junior doctors, nurses and therapists need to access sensitive data. On one hand, PANACEA is helping to protect the hospital environment from cyber-risks such as attack, failure and sharing of information without consent. On the other, it is an opportunity to look at what technology can do to support care.

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