Shields Health Care hack may have exposed data for 2 million people

Shields Health Care Group, a Massachusetts-based company involved with imaging and health management services, has announced a major hack that could have exposed sensitive information for up to two million people. The company learned of the attack on March 28th, and after an investigation it found that a malicious actor had access to some of its systems between March 7th and 20th. 

Crucially, the hack included sensitive information like social security numbers, medical record information, patient IDs and insurance details. The company claims there isn’t any evidence of identity theft from the incident, but there’s still a chance customers could be compromised down the line. 

“Upon discovery, we took steps to secure our systems, including rebuilding certain systems, and conducted a thorough investigation to confirm the nature and scope of the activity and to determine who may be affected,” the company said in a statement. “Additionally, while we have safeguards in place to protect data in our care, we continue to review and further enhance these protections as part of our ongoing commitment to data security.”

Shields says it has contacted the FBI, as well as local and state regulators, about the incident. According to the AP, the FBI isn’t commenting on the attack yet. Moving forward, Shields says it will contact customers once it learns who’s affected.

watchOS 9 will include improved sleep tracking and medication reminders

Apple is at last promising better sleep tracking for Apple Watch as part of watchOS 9. The updated Sleep app will include a sleep stage function. It will be able to detect the REM, core and deep sleep stages and track those over time. You’ll be ab…

CVS won’t fill prescriptions for controlled substances from two telehealth companies

CVS will no longer fill prescriptions from telehealth companies Cerebral and Done Health for controlled substances. The pharmacy chain said that, following a review, it had unresolved concerns with both companies. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

“We are committed to making mental health services as accessible and convenient as possible. At the same time, it is important that medications are prescribed appropriately,” CVS Health’s executive director of corporate communications Mike DeAngelis told Engadget. 

“We recently conducted a review of certain telehealth companies that prescribe controlled substance medications. As a result of our being unable to resolve concerns we have with Cerebral and Done Health, effective May 26th, 2022, CVS Pharmacy will no longer accept prescriptions for controlled substances issued through these companies.”

The startups have tens of thousands of patients between them, the Journal notes. They have prescribed stimulants such as Adderall for patients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These stimulants are regulated and classed as schedule 2 controlled substances due to the risk of abuse.

Some other pharmacies, such as Walmart and Truepill, previously delayed or declined to fill prescriptions from the two startups. They reportedly had concerns that clinicians at Cerebral and Done were writing too many stimulant prescriptions.

It recently emerged that Cerebral is under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Following that news, the company put prescriptions for ADHD meds for new patients on hold. Cerebral said last week it would stop prescribing most controlled substances for all patients by October. Just two days after that, its board replaced CEO Kyle Robertson.

Along with ADHD, Cerebral says it treats depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders and serious mental illnesses through therapy, counseling and, in some cases, prescriptions. Done focuses on ADHD treatment. 

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians were banned from prescribing stimulants without an in-person visit with patients. Those federal rules were loosened in March 2020 for schedule 2 substances, which enabled Cerebral and Done to start offering prescriptions after virtual consultations.

Update 5/25 7:40PM ET: “We learned on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 24 that CVS will no longer fill Cerebral’s controlled substance prescriptions, effective Thursday, May 26. This decision does not affect Cerebral’s non-controlled substance prescriptions,” Cerebral told Engadget via email. The company says is “doing everything possible to ensure these patients get access to medications that their health care providers have determined they need,” as well as reaching out to impacted patients “to help ensure that their transition to another source of prescribed medications.” Prior to CVS’s decision, Cerebral says it had stopped new prescriptions for controlled substances due to the “impending expiration of waivers enacted during the [COVID-19] state of emergency.”‘

Update 5/26 10:30AM ET: “While we are disappointed with the decision of some pharmacies to prevent access to prescriptions generated on our platform, we will continue to provide them with clarity on Done and our commitment to high-quality psychiatric chronic care management,” Done said in a statement to Engadget. 

“Done is currently assisting affected patients and providers with the transition of their pharmacy choice and we expect this situation will be quickly resolved, if provided the opportunity, so patients can access the medications they have been prescribed using evidence based medicine,” it added. “Done hopes that companies with a mission to ‘help people on their path to better health’ and that are ‘committed to patient safety and well-being’ would value deeply rooted evidence based treatment for ADHD — a mental health condition, instead of placing additional barriers to care that millions struggle to receive on a daily basis.”

Massive DNA study of human cancers offers new clues about their causes

A team of UK scientists has analyzed the complete genetic makeup of 12,000 tumors from NHS patients and discovered 58 new mutations that provide clues about their potential causes. The team, composed of scientists from Cambridge University Hospitals and the University of Cambridge, used data from the 100,000 Genomes Project. That’s a British initiative to sequence the whole genomes of patients with cancers and rare diseases. 

Team leader Professor Serena Nik-Zainal said this is the largest study of its kind and that the vast amount of data her team worked with allowed them to detect patterns in the genetic alterations or “mutational signatures” found in the tumors. By comparing their results with other studies, they were able to confirm that 58 of the mutational signatures they found were previously unknown. Some of them are pretty common, while some are rare.

“The reason it is important to identify mutational signatures is because they are like fingerprints at a crime scene — they help to pinpoint cancer culprits,” Nik-Zainal explained. Some signatures could show that past exposure to environmental causes such as smoking or UV light had triggered the cancer, while others could have treatment implications. They could, for instance, pinpoint genetic abnormalities that could be targeted by specific drugs. 

Professor Matt Brown, chief scientific officer of Genomics England said: “Mutational signatures are an example of using the full potential of [whole genome sequencing]. We hope to use the mutational clues seen in this study and apply them back into our patient population, with the ultimate aim of improving diagnosis and management of cancer patients.”

In addition to conducting DNA analysis and publishing its results in Science, the team also developed an algorithm called FitMS that will give clinicians easy access to the new information they discovered. FitMS looks for both common and rare signatures in the results of a patient’s whole genome sequencing test. Doctors can use the algorithm to find out if their patients exhibit any of the newly discovered mutations for a more accurate diagnosis and for personalized treatments. 

MIT engineers built a robot for emergency stroke surgeries

Remote robotic-assisted surgery is far from new, with various educational and research institutions developing machines doctors can control from other locations over the years. There hasn’t been a lot of movement on that front when it comes to endovascular treatments for stroke patients, which is why a team of MIT engineers has been developing a telerobotic system surgeons can use over the past few years. The team, which has published its paper in Science Robotics, has now presented a robotic arm that doctors can control remotely using a modified joystick to treat stroke patients.

That arm has a magnet attached to its wrist, and surgeons can adjust its orientation to guide a magnetic wire through the patient’s arteries and vessels in order to remove blood clots in their brain. Similar to in-person procedures, surgeons will have to rely on live imaging to get to the blood clot, except the machine will allow them to treat patients not physically in the room with them. 

There’s a critical window of time after a stroke’s onset during which endovascular treatment should be administered to save a patient’s life or to preserve their brain function. Problem is, the procedure is quite complex and takes years to master. It involves guiding a thin wire through vessels and arteries without damaging any of them, after all. Neurosurgeons trained in the procedure are usually found in major hospitals, and patients in remote locations that have to be transported to these larger centers might miss that critical time window. With this machine, surgeons can be anywhere and still perform the procedure. Another upside? It minimizes the doctos’ exposure to radiation from X-ray imaging.

During their tests, the MIT engineers only had to train a group of neurosurgeons for an hour to use the machine. By the end of that hour, the surgeons were able to successfully use the machine to remove the fake blood clots in a transparent model with life-size vessels replicating the complex arteries of the brain.

MIT professor and team member Xuanhe Zhao said:

“We imagine, instead of transporting a patient from a rural area to a large city, they could go to a local hospital where nurses could set up this system. A neurosurgeon at a major medical center could watch live imaging of the patient and use the robot to operate in that golden hour. That’s our future dream.”

You can watch a demo of the machine below: