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Ransomware Group Leaks Stolen Patient Information from Change Healthcare

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Some of the files, which TechCrunch has seen, also contain contracts and agreements between Change Healthcare and its partners. For Change Healthcare, there’s another complication: This is the second group to demand a ransom payment to prevent the release of stolen patient data in as many months. UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, said there was no evidence of a new cyber incident. What’s more likely is that a dispute between members and affiliates of the ransomware gang left the stolen data in limbo and Change Healthcare exposed to further extortion. A Russia-based ransomware gang called ALPHV took credit for the Change Healthcare data theft.

Change Healthcare Patient Data Stolen and Leaked by Ransomware Group

Unitedhealth Change Uhc Uhg Optum Breach Ransomware
Some of the files, which TechCrunch has seen, also contain contracts and agreements between Change Healthcare and its partners. For Change Healthcare, there’s another complication: This is the second group to demand a ransom payment to prevent the release of stolen patient data in as many months. UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, said there was no evidence of a new cyber incident. What’s more likely is that a dispute between members and affiliates of the ransomware gang left the stolen data in limbo and Change Healthcare exposed to further extortion. A Russia-based ransomware gang called ALPHV took credit for the Change Healthcare data theft.

Will Generative AI Revolutionize Healthcare? The Impending Disapproval of Some in Reaction

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Prominent generative AI startups in healthcare include Ambience Healthcare, which is developing a generative AI app for clinicians; Nabla, an ambient AI assistant for practitioners; and Abridge, which creates analytics tools for medical documentation. The broad enthusiasm for generative AI is reflected in the investments in generative AI efforts targeting healthcare. Collectively, generative AI in healthcare startups have raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital to date, and the vast majority of health investors say that generative AI has significantly influenced their investment strategies. But both professionals and patients are mixed as to whether healthcare-focused generative AI is ready for prime time. Generative AI might not be what people wantIn a recent Deloitte survey, only about half (53%) of U.S. consumers said that they thought generative AI could improve healthcare — for example, by making it more accessible or shortening appointment wait times.

Catch Change Healthcare Hackers: US Grants $10M in Assistance

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The State Department blamed the prolific ransomware group for targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare services. Last month, an affiliate group of the ALPHV/BlackCat gang took credit for a cyberattack and weeks-long outage at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare, which processes around one-in-three U.S. patient medical records. The affiliate group went public after accusing the main ALPHV/BlackCat gang of swindling the contract hackers out of $22 million in ransom that Change Healthcare allegedly paid to prevent the mass leak of patient records. Change Healthcare has said since that it ejected the hackers from its network and restored much of its systems. U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, has not yet confirmed if any patient data was stolen.

“Boosting Pharma Access to Quality Patient Data: Century Health Secures $2M Investment for Innovative AI Integration”

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Century Health is a new startup also getting in on the action. “One of the biggest issues around innovation for new treatments is efficient access to good patient data. That data sat around for decades because it takes manual effort to normalize and extract insight from it.”That’s when he teamed up with friend Sanjay Hariharan, a data scientist and applied AI engineer, to form Century Health. For us, that also means as affordably as possible with access to good real-world data.”Now with $2 million pre-seed funding, Century Health will run three to five pilots over the next several months. In addition to the validated technology, another milestone will be to secure early revenue from the pilots, which Century Health can leverage to go after another round of venture capital.

Simplifying Medical Image Exchange: PocketHealth Facilitates Smooth Doctor-Patient Interactions

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Have you ever needed a copy of your medical imaging to take to your doctor or another healthcare provider and received the images on a CD? Many radiologists still use this ancient format to transfer patients’ imaging files. A startup called PocketHealth has built an medical image exchange platform to digitize the process for every patient and healthcare provider, making it more intelligent and personalized, no CDs involved. PocketHealth isn’t the only company offering medical imaging sharing for patients in the MedTech space. Ambra Health, based in New York, offers solutions for medical image sharing, and EnvoyAI, based in Massachusetts, develops a medical imaging AI marketplace.

“Concerns Mount as Change Healthcare Outage Persists, Raising Potential for Patient Data Breach”

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If patient data has been stolen, the ramifications for the affected patients will likely be irreversible and life-lasting. Change Healthcare is one of the world’s largest facilitators of health and medical data and patient records, handling billions of healthcare transactions annually. The cybersecurity director expressed alarm at the prospect of the hackers potentially publishing the stolen sensitive patient data online. For those on the front-lines of healthcare cybersecurity, the worst-case scenario is that stolen patient records become public. Do you work at Change Healthcare, Optum or UnitedHealth and know more about the cyberattack?

“Nation-State Breach: UnitedHealth Discovers Hack on Change Healthcare, Continues to See Pharmacy Outages”

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UnitedHealth says Change Healthcare hacked by nation state, as pharmacy outages drag onU.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group said Thursday in a filing with government regulators that its subsidiary Change Healthcare was compromised likely by government-backed hackers. In a filing Thursday, UHG blamed the ongoing cybersecurity incident affecting Change Healthcare on suspected nation state hackers but said it had no timeframe for when its systems would be back online. UHG did not attribute the cyberattack to a specific nation or government, or cite what evidence it had to support its claim. Change Healthcare provides patient billing across the U.S. healthcare system. Change Healthcare has not yet disclosed the specific nature of its cyberattack.

Cyberattack Strikes US Health Tech Leader Change Healthcare

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U.S. healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems. Most of the login pages for Change Healthcare are inaccessible or offline when TechCrunch checked at the time of writing. Michigan local newspaper the Huron Daily Tribune is reporting that local pharmacies are experiencing outages due to the Change Healthcare cyberattack. Change Healthcare is one of the largest healthcare technology companies in the United States. Both Optum and Change Healthcare are owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group.

“Nabla Secures Additional $24M Funding for Revolutionary AI Tool Supporting Physicians”

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Nabla has been working on an AI copilot for doctors and other medical staff. Nabla then uses a large language model refined with medical data and health-related conversations to identify the important data points in the consultation — medical vitals, drug names, pathologies, etc. The company uses a combination of an off-the-shelf speech-to-text API from Microsoft Azure and its own speech-to-text model (a refined model based on the open-source Whisper model). Once the LLM has processed the transcript, Nabla de-pseudonymizes the output. However, doctors can give their approval and ask for the patient consent to share medical notes with Nabla so that they can be used to correct transcription errors.