Has anybody here have a pacemaker from St. Jude, if so, you might be interested in the following, rather scary.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Abbott Laboratories said on Tuesday it would issue updates to reduce the risk of its St. Jude heart implants being hacked and to warn patients that the devices’ batteries may run down earlier than expected.
It was the second round of updates for the heart implants that Abbott has announced since buying medical device maker St. Jude Medical earlier this year.
The U.S. government launched a probe last year of claims the devices were vulnerable to potentially life-threatening hacks that could cause implanted devices to pace at potentially dangerous rates or cause them to fail by draining their batteries.
I have a St. Jude pacemaker, they called me about a month ago and said to have my device (I use it to send the data from my pacemaker to U. of M. hospital) plugged in as they wanted to update it.
Liz
