Your insulin pump could pose a threat to life. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has found that certain models are vulnerable to hackers, who may increase or decrease doses of insulin delivery to the patient surreptitiously.
The drug regulator has issued a medical device alert over four models of Gurugram-based company India Medtronic Private Ltd’s insulin pumps, saying that these models pose a cyber-security risk to the patients that may use it.
MiniMed Paradigm (MMT-715, MMT-712, MMT-722) and MiniMed Paradigm Veo (MMT-754) are vulnerable and can be hacked by a person with special technical skills to tweak insulin delivery dosage of the user patient, DCGI has stated in a medical device alert.
“These insulin pumps are designed to communicate using wireless radio frequency (RF) with other devices such as blood glucose meters, glucose sensor transmitters and certain CareLink USB devices. An unauthorized person with special technical skills and equipment could potentially connect wirelessly to a nearby insulin pump to change settings and control insulin delivery,” states the medical device alert.
DCGI has appealed to medical directors, healthcare professionals, distributors, users and staff involved in management of patients to check if the model and software version of the insulin pump falls amongst the four risky models. If it does, patients should switch to a model with more cyber security protection.
“Patients should not share your pump serial number with anyone, and be attentive to pump notifications, alarms and alerts. A patient should monitor their blood glucose levels closely. Connect the Medtronic insulin pump to other Medtronic devices and software only. It is also advisable to disconnect the USB device from your computer when you are not using it to download data from your pump,” said the medical device alert.
On June 27, US-FDA issued a safety alert as also India Medtronic Private Ltd issued a field safety notification regarding the potential risks that some insulin pumps pose. However, DCGI has not received any complaints from affected patients as yet.