On Monday evening, HTA was pleased to co-host a private roundtable with the Cybersecurity Business Network at The Labour Party Conference, bringing together leading voices from across the health and cyber sectors to explore how we can best protect patients and health infrastructure from cyber threats.
The discussion focused on practical ways to strengthen resilience, with a strong focus on the human element, while simultaneously enabling innovation and digitisation across the health ecosystem, and how government and Parliament can most effectively support the public and private sectors to maintain security.
Some initial takeaways:
🩺 Digitising the public health system is an immense project, and we’ve come a long way in the past few decades. A lot of excellent work is being done locally by trusts to innovate, and implement emerging technologies while staying cyber secure, to keep everything running “business as usual” for patients.
🧑⚕️Much of cyber regulation revolves around technology, but many of the vulnerabilities come down to people. We need to invest in upskilling the public sector workforce, and treat cyber security with a level of maturity – there is risk, but people want to understand how they can help.
🏛️Attendees raised the perennial issue of enabling greater cross-government collaboration. Cyber lies with DSIT, but there needs to be recognition and expertise available to all departments, in order to ensure an effective and cohesive cyber regime.
Our thanks to the Cybersecurity Business Network and all participants for a thoughtful evening of practical insights and collaboration.