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Abstract Hospitals and healthcare systems are essential parts of a nation's critical infrastructure. However, in recent years, they have increasingly become targets of cyber-attacks, leading to disruptions of the services lasting from weeks to months. The number of incidents has tripled in the last decade, and such attacks could not only significantly impair a nation's ability to handle emergencies, but also pose a public health concern. This narrative review summarizes the most recent cyber-attacks on the healthcare industry since 2009 and provides a general overview of the effects of cyberattacks on patients, health care providers and hospital systems, and management strategies hospitals adopted to recover from the attacks. Hospitals should invest in emergency preparedness for cyber-attacks by developing a downtime procedure manual, conducting training drills, and making downtime supplies available including approved paper charts and surgical and emergency service protocol so that they can quickly and efficiently respond to a cyber-attack. The article also discusses various preventive and preparedness strategies to either avoid cyber-attacks or efficiently handle the attacks with minimal interruptions.
Li et al. (Fri,) studied this question.