Application of ChatGPT in healthcare

ChatGPT digital tool is well known at this point. This artificial intelligence (AI) is having a huge impact on the information and communication age. ChatGPT is being used for different purposes to improve some systems, however, some of the applications for which it is being used are generating controversy, and therefore, one more reason why it is being echoed.

If you still don’t know ChatGPT, you should know that it is a tool developed by OpenAI specialised in dialogue. It is a chatbot. In other words, you enter a text input and ChatGPT generates a coherent text that responds to what you have written.

Well, ChatGPT can also be used in health. But what do we mean by “in health”? “In health” means that it can be applied in any area that affects people’s wellbeing, whether it is to develop new software to improve the health management of a hospital or to ask questions about our welfare from home.

Several projects have been developed using AI with focus on health. Some of them implement the same ChatGPT models and others are based on proprietary technology, all of them taking into account the communication with the patient.

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Health 4.0: the importance of cybersecurity in the healthcare area

The concept of Health 4.0 emerges as a specific derivation of Industry 4.0. But what is Industry 4.0? This concept arises in Germany in 2011, as a project to improve the industry but without a clear definition (see reference at the end of the article).

From this moment on, Industry 4.0 has been appearing with different interpretations, although there is a unified definition. Industry 4.0 is an umbrella that encompasses nine technologies that help in the transformation of industrial production and process automation.

These technologies are:

  • Big Data and Data Analysis
  • Simulation
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Augmented Reality
  • Cloud Computing
  • Additive Manufacturing
  • Autonomous robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Integration systems
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Blockchain to secure healthcare environments

The increasing number of data breaches in the healthcare sector is causing serious problems in management and storage. In addition, traditional security methods being used to protect healthcare applications are proving ineffective. This is why emerging technologies such as blockchain are offering new security approaches and processes for healthcare applications, providing data confidentiality and privacy.

Data breaches are one of the main cybersecurity issues in the healthcare sector. Figure 1 shows how the amount of health record data leakage has been increasing, highlighting a large change between 2018 and 2019, a date coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 1. Number of data breaches of 500 or more health records in the healthcare sector from 2009 to 2021. Source: https://www.hipaajournal.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics/
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Hacking DICOM: the hospital standard

Have you ever thought that radiographs were just JPG images? Do you remember hearing the name DICOM? In this article we expect to resolve all your doubts about the protocol for sending medical images and show you its implications for cybersecurity.

Quick introduction to DICOM

Figure 1. DICOM logo

Medical images that are transmitted within hospitals, such as X-rays or ultrasounds, are not in the common image formats, but are in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format. However, they can be converted to JPG or PNG.

Although at first glance it looks like a simple image format, DICOM is much more: it is the standard for transmission, storage, retrieval, printing, processing and visualization of medical images and their information. Thanks to the implementation of this standard, technology in the health field was revolutionized, replacing physical radiographs with digital radiographs with all the implied data. Today, DICOM is recognized as the ISO 12052 standard.

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