FDA offers best practices for patient-facing alerts on medical device vulnerabilities

The US FDA has released a best practices document for designing a communication approach to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the healthcare sector. The document aims to provide guidance to industry stakeholders and federal partners in promoting public health and mitigating potential harm. The FDA advises stakeholders to focus on elements such as interpretability, balancing risks and benefits, and having a clear communication structure. The move comes as the use of connected medical devices increases and cybersecurity threats become more frequent.