As the use of networked medical devices becomes prevalent in the healthcare world, security breaches are growing and, if not addressed and mitigated, they threaten to undermine technology development in the field and result in significant fianancial loses, a new report from the Atlantic Council and Intel Security says.

The report, The Healthcare Internet of Things: Rewards and Risks, said there is marked gowth in adoption of these devices, with 48 percent of healthcare providers polled saying they had integrated consumer technologies such as wearable health-monitoring devices or operational technologies like automated pharmacy-dispensing systems with their IT ecosystems.

Use of these “cyber-physical systems” could save $63 billion in healthcare costs over 15 years with a 15 to 30 percent reduction in hospital equipment costs and a 15 to 20 percent increase in patient throughput, the report said.

Security issues loom large in the market, however, with 44 percent of all registered data breaches in 2013 targeted at medical companies. In addition, information security breaches reported by healthcare providers skyrocketed 60 percent from 2013 to 2014 – representing more than double the increase seen in other industries, with financial losses up 282 percent, according to the report.

Networked devices are threatened by several factors, the report authros wrote, including acidental failures in technology that can undermine consumer trust and inhibit the development of new tools; privacy violations, in which stored data on devices is targeted; and widespread disruption, where connected devices are infected by malware of all kinds.

“Security considerations, along with the devices ability to improve patients lives, must become an integral part of the process of conceiving and manufacturing these devices,” the report said.

What's more, the report recommends continued improvements to private-private and public-private collaboration rather than more regulation, and the authors continued that the manufacturing sector must play a key role in security practices.

“A new approach to risk management of networked medical devices begins with cooperation between manufacturers of devices and software,” the report said. “Manufacturers need to work with the security industry and regulators to develop a comprehensive risk model to follow during product innovation, design, and delivery. This model would view the networked device as a platform, not a standalone delivery device.”

This approach “would create corresponding industry coalitions around specific device lines to consider the security of technologies connected to that device,” the authors wrote. “The goal is to produce a medical device as a robust platform, upon which additional technologies and services can be added.“

The report said several actions can be taken to reduce the security threat.

“These flaws can be managed and even reduced with a handful of steps: a focus on security by design: better collaboration among industry; manufacturers, regulators, and medical practitioners; a change in the regulatory approval paradigm, and encouraging feedback from patients and families who directly benefit from these devices.