Telehealth was an unexpected technology bright spot in 2020, as the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) relaxed enforcement of certain aspects of HIPAA, helping to reduce COVID exposure via virtual rounding and virtual visits.

Unfortunately, bad actors have shown a lack of morality in their pursuit of illegal profits and have continued to attack medical organizations. Ransomware attacks, for example, can cripple a hospital’s abilities to provide high-quality patient care by denying access to key computer systems, which would force medical professionals to have to treat patients based on memory and paper-based records.