For the first time in the history of digital attacks, a ransomware attack on a hospital network is said to have led to the death of a baby girl in April 2020. And the mother of the dead girl has sued a hospital for not only failing to mitigate a cyber attack but also hiding its consequences that severely affected patient care.
The hospital in question is Springhill Memorial Hospital and the baby girl who died because of the cyber incident is Nicko, born with an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Since the doctors failed to react and operate her on time, she reportedly died due to a brain damage and some other health issues after some weeks of her birth.
Technically in medical terms, if the file encrypting malware did not encrypt the IT infrastructure of the hospital, the brain & heart abnormalities(during labor and delivery) would have been recorded on the fetal heart rate monitors, thus giving enough time to the doctors or medical practitioners to diagnose and treat the sick infant.
As per the sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders, the day the baby was born in April 2020, a ransomware attack crippled wireless tracking of medical records and access to patient records, thus pushing the doctors into a helpless situation, that lasted for over 10 days.
Teiranni Kidd is the mother who sued Springhill Hospitals Inc. in a circuit court in Alabama last year. And the issue was brought to light by Wall Street Journal as a court hearing held in September this year agreed to where the hospital authorities could have prevented the death of the infant, if they could have laid appropriate security measures to safeguard their infrastructure.
