Eye Clinics should be more accessible for the visually impaired Eye clinics play a critical role in investigating, diagnosing and treating eye conditions affecting patients of all ages. It’s imperative they remain accessible to every single patient, accommodating their individual needs from the moment they cross the threshold. This means following the proper precautions to keep every premises safe, welcoming, comfortable and convenient for those affected by impaired vision or blindness. What does this involve? 1. Staff Must be Trained to Deal with All Patients
This Is Why Smart Cities Are Most Of All - Accessible Cities. If you have ever found yourself next to a store in a foreign country without being able to read the sign on the entrance – you’ll understand this reason immediately. By installing our audible wayfinding solution in the street of Eben Gavirol in Tel Aviv, we have also translated the information into more languages so tourists who visit there – could learn more about the Hebrew letters they see all around them. One of the beautiful parts of accessibility is that when you implement it – you almost always can find other audience who can benefit from it.
How Can Airports Assist Travelers with Vision Loss? □ Every single day, more than 2 million people use airports across the United States. This will come as no surprise if you’ve visited an airport recently (especially one serving a major city): they are busy, frustrating, and often chaotic places. That makes traveling by plane much more daunting, adding additional stress to the usual routine of customs, security etc. — now just imagine how much more difficult all that would be with sight loss. With more than 3 million Americans living with blindness or impaired vision, airports have a responsibility to review their accessibility services and make sure they’re as effective as can be.
GDPR for Small Business: A Beginner's Guide What GDPR Means for Small Businesses Since 25th May 2018, businesses that process personal data relating to data subjects in the European Union (EU) are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regardless of their size or location. The likelihood is that most small businessesmaintaining a database of customers, employees, and/or business contacts will be required to comply with GDPR. GDPR Best Practices The General Data Protection Act (GDPR) becomes law on 25 May 2018, so it’s important that all businesses and organisations are aware of GDPR best practices. Failure to adopt these GDPR best practices could result in non-compliance. This in turn could lead to businesses facing heavy fines, or other sanctions. Does GDPR apply to EU citizens in the United States The use of the words ‘citizen of the European Union’ can be confusing in the context of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For GDPR compliance requirements, it makes more sense to talk about individuals who are located “in the Union” (within the EU), and indeed Controllers or Processors based in the EU. It is difficult to find the word “citizen” in the GDPR text, and it’s only mentioned once in a Recital not in the core Articles. It’s preferable not to refer to “citizens” when analyzing GDPR. Indeed, the language that is used most consistently throughout the GDPR is “natural person” or “data subject” and “personal data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
GDPR for US Companies The implications of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) for US companies who control or process the personal data of individuals located within the EU will be significant – and compliance is compulsory in nearly all cases. The GDPR is a new EU data protection law that came into effect on May 25, 2018. The Regulation brings greater obligations on companies and organisations processing the personal data of data subjects in the European Union and gives those individuals or (data subjects in the legislation) more control over their personal data. A data subject is essentially under GDPR law a living individual within the EU whose personal data is being processed.
Phishing Attacks Warning Issued to Patients of Salem Health Hospitals & Clinics and Delta Dental of Arizona Salem Health Hospitals & Clinics in Oregon suffered a phishing attack on July 31, 2019 that lead to an unauthorized person obtaining access to the email accounts of several employees. The breach was discovered within a day of the accounts being accessed and the compromised accounts were safeguarded. Patients were made aware of the breach on September 27 and were told that an investigation into the impacted accounts was current. The affected email accounts were expected to contain a limited amount of patient information including names, dates of birth, and data related to the medical services patients had been submitted. At the time of issuing the notice, the investigation into the breach was underway. On Thursday, November 7, 2019, Salem Health representative, Elijah Penner, stated “The incident was reviewed thoroughly, and Salem Health has no indication that any patient information has been misused.”
Sarrell Dental Ransomware Attack IMpacts 391,472 Patients Sarrell Dental, an Alabama-based not-for-profit Children’s dental and optical service clinic, has suffered a ransomware attack in which the protected health information of its patients may have been infiltrated. Sarrell Dental is the largest dental services clinic in the state of Alabama and operates 17 clinics in the state. In July 2019, ransomware was implemented on its network which lead to the widespread file encryption. Upon identification of the attack, the network was disabled, and an investigation was begun. Impacted clinics were closed for two weeks while the breach was investigated and systems were brought back online. A ransom demand was submitted but it was not paid.
NCH Healthcare System Phishing Attack Impacts 73 Email Accounts A phishing attack on Bonita Springs, FL-based NCH Healthcare System was noticed on June 14, 2019 when suspicious email activity on its payroll database. The investigation indicated that 73 employees had replied to phishing emails and disclosed their account credentials to the cybercriminals. It is typical for healthcare organizations to identify an email account breach and later find out that the attack was more extensive than first thought. In a lot of cases, many email accounts are discovered to have been compromised, often due to lateral phishing – the use of one impacted email account to send phishing emails to other individuals in the group.
111,000 Patients Impacted in Imperial Health Ransomware Attack A physicians’ network for patients based in Southwest Louisiana called Imperial Health is contacting over 111,000 patients to make them aware that a portion of their protected health information has potentially been illegally obtained as part of a ransomware attack. An unauthorized party was able to install ransomware onto the network of physicians, which encrypted files and a database. The database in question was configured to be used by the Imperial Health’s Center for Orthopaedics (CFO). The ransomware attack was initially detected on May 19, 2019.
Medtronic Valleylab Energy Platform and Electrosurgery Products Flaws Identified Six flaws have been identified in the Medtronic Valleylab energy platform and electrosurgery products, including one fatal flaw that could permit a hacker to obtain access to the Valleylab Energy platform and view/overwrite files and remotely execute arbitrary code. The flaws were discovered by Medtronic which reported them to the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under its responsible vulnerability disclosure policy. Four vulnerabilities have been discovered in the following Medtronic Valleylab products Valleylab Exchange Client, Version 3.4 and earlier versionsValleylab FT10 Energy Platform (VLFT10GEN) software Version 4.0.0 and earlier versionsValleylab FX8 Energy Platform (VLFX8GEN) software Version 1.1.0 and earlier versions The critical vulnerability is an improper input validation vulnerability in the rssh utility, which allows file uploads.
New York Medical Center Hit $3 Million HIPAA Penalty for Lack of Encryption The University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) has been sanctioned with $3 million HIPAA penalty for not encrypting mobile devices and other HIPAA breaches. URMC is one of the biggest health systems in New York State with more than 26,000 staff at the Medical Center and various other components of the health system, including Strong Memorial Hospital and the School of Dentistry. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) began an investigation after the receipt of two breach reports from UMRC – the loss of an unencrypted flash drive and the theft of an unencrypted laptop computer between 2013 and 2017. This was not the first occasion OCR had investigated URMC.