Healthcare Ecosystem: Security's Role in Helping HealthTech Find Its Way

Note: Presentation times are in Pacific Standard Time (PST).

Thursday, February 03, 2022 - 2:05 pm2:35 pm

Joy Forsythe, Alto Pharmacy

Abstract: 

As the news fills up with ransomware attacks on health systems, the HealthTech startup space is booming. Why can’t our healthcare be as modern and friendly as ordering a pair of shoes or getting dinner reservations?

I made the leap from building enterprise security products to HealthTech startups 5 years ago with idealism about how technology could fix things and I’m here to share my "lessons learned." Like many other "disruptors," HealthTech companies are discovering that a lot of difficult security choices were made for a reason -- sometimes because the alternative is life-threatening -- or that alternative will take a long time to change.

Most importantly, healthcare is its own ecosystem that we have to understand before we can reason about it. Once I started to understand who the different entities were and how new startups fit in that system, I started to identify places where security can innovate and do better.

Joy Forsythe, Alto Pharmacy

Joy Marie Forsythe spent the past 5 years building security programs at Alto Pharmacy and Mango Health, focusing on how to be respectful of patients’ security and privacy. Prior to that, she worked on software security, security monitoring and building enterprise security tools at Fortify Software, HP, and Arcsight.
BibTeX
@conference {277325,
author = {Joy Forsythe},
title = {Healthcare Ecosystem: Security{\textquoteright}s Role in Helping {HealthTech} Find Its Way},
year = {2022},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = feb
}

Presentation Video