Rethinking cybersecurity through the lens of care in digital medicine

The CYMEDSEC project is proud to announce a new Perspective article, recently published in npj Digital Medicine.

Authored by Chiara Carboni, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair of Digital Cultures, TU Dresden, recently, a result of a collaborative effort by a team of researchers from TU Dresden, including co-authors Celia Brightwell and Orit Halpern (Chair of Digital Cultures), as well as Oscar Freyer and Stephen Gilbert (Else Kröner Fresenius Center for Digital Health).

As a matter of fact, in current cybersecurity frameworks, patients, healthcare professionals, and other end users are often framed as sources of risk. This perspective argues for a fundamental shift: recognizing these users as contributors to security rather than liabilities. Through the secondary analysis of two case studies one involving Swedish hospitals and the other a UK smart-home health monitoring system the article explores the everyday tensions between standardized digital security protocols and the practical, relational needs of care.

We need a new way to think about cybersecurity in digital medicine. Rather than looking down on end-users' non-compliant practices, we should to be curious about the goals and values that inform them, and try to integrate them into security frameworks. In medicine, there can be no security without care."

Chiara Carboni, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chair of Digital Cultures, TU Dresden

The article outlines three key approaches to bridge the gap between cybersecurity and care:

• drawing inspiration from existing care practices to reshape security design

• acknowledging and empowering end users as co-creators of secure systems

• using participatory design to align cybersecurity measures with on-the-ground needs and values

These findings resonate with CYMEDSEC's core mission: to develop robust cybersecurity solutions for connected medical devices that are not only technically sound but also aligned with real-world care practices. In this light, the article offers insights into how care and security, often treated as opposing logics, can in fact be reconciled.

The article is available in npj Digital Medicine.