Claris Law Legal Blogging Community

Name:

E-mail:

Phone Number:

Zip Code:

Your Question:

Editor: Marc Jay Bern
Profession: Defective Medical Device Lawyer

Category: Medtronic News

An UMass professor found a way to remotely hack and control an implantable heart defibrillator (ICD), proving hackers could someday potentially harm the millions of people who have one of these devices to help regulate their hearts.

Using a homemade radio transmitter, researchers were able to reprogram a pacemaker, like, device and deliver high-energy shocks that could lead to all kinds of mischief including causing a fatal heart attack to extracting personal information such as patient's names and social security numbers associated with the device.

Another study in March by the Medical Device Safety Institute in Boston found Medtronic Maximo defibrillators and the monitoring system used to read them are vulnerable to hacking and reprogramming.