Healthcare technology company TRIMEDX, a provider of clinical asset management solutions for health systems’ clinical engineering services, announces a strategic partnership with Medigate―a dedicated medical device security and asset management solution firm―to meet the demands of clinical asset management (CAM) and medical device safety and security for healthcare systems. 

This coincides with TRIMEDX’s launch of its CAM Advanced and CYBER Advanced product offerings, which enables it to offer comprehensive, real-time data along with enhanced visibility to guide providers in improving their overall performance―improving financial health, reducing risk, and improving patient/clinician satisfaction.

Through this partnership, TRIMEDX and Medigate deliver an integrated solution that merges the TRIMEDX CAM Advanced and CYBER Advanced solutions with Medigate’s real-time visibility, utilization data, and threat/vulnerability detection. 

“Leveraging the power of cybersecurity monitoring, the depth and breadth of device-level data, analytics, and the skills and expertise of our field associates and leadership, TRIMEDX delivers a best-in-class portfolio designed to manage the full lifecycle of a hospital or health system’s clinical assets,” says TRIMEDX CEO Henry Hummel.

Advanced, Real-Time Utilization Insights

According to Deloitte Development LLC in July 2018, 68% of medical devices are projected to be connected devices by 2025. With cyberattacks rising exponentially each year, the security of connected medical devices has never been more critical. And since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, TRIMEDX’s cybersecurity team has seen the number of cyber threats increase from an average of 19 per month to 80-plus per month during pandemic response efforts.

“As more medical devices are integrated into clinical networks, real-time connected medical device utilization data, in lieu of estimates, or manual collection of data over time, adds greater accuracy to emergency preparedness and capital planning initiatives across hospitals and health systems,” says LeAnne Hester, TRIMEDX chief marketing officer.

The Medigate platform discovers and precisely identifies every connected device on a clinical network, automatically doing so, in real-time, through proprietary algorithms specifically built to identify devices and communication protocols. “The foundation of our work together is around leveraging the strengths of both organizations,” says Jonathan Langer, CEO and co-founder of Medigate. “The combined value of TRIMEDX’s clinical engineering expertise with Medigate’s deep technology specific to healthcare cybersecurity will fuel the TRIMEDX operation with even greater actionable and accurate data in providing high-value service and information.”

Threat Detection and Remediation

Through this partnership, Medigate and TRIMEDX address device safety and security monitoring, threat detection and remediation in a closed-loop system, marrying industry expertise in both technology and people. Medigate’s platform continuously reviews network activity, quickly identifying anomalies that are escalated for review, while a dedicated team of TRIMEDX clinical engineering cyber specialists proactively searches for known vulnerabilities, monitors supplier response to known risks, and applies approved patches. 

In addition, recognizing the unique expertise required to manage the cyber risk of medical devices, all members of the TRIMEDX Cybersecurity Team receive approximately 200 hours of dedicated training through the TRIMEDX CYBER Academy. All data is tracked through the TRIMEDX proprietary work order system to keep clients continually apprised on the status of remediation.

“This is a fundamental shift from a manual process of capturing data to automatic, real-time cybersecurity monitoring of connected devices across clinical networks,” says Doug Folsom, TRIMEDX chief information officer. “Real-time device data is securely captured and analyzed, enabling us to create visibility and deliver the most powerful and comprehensive Clinical Asset Management solution. Utilization, combined with our clinical asset benchmarks, provide objective data for health systems as they make decisions around replacing, disposing of or reallocating medical devices, leading to savings in operational and capital expense.”

Partnership Expands TRIMEDX Product Offerings

Building on its strong foundation of clinical asset management, now TRIMEDX introduces its CAM Advanced and CYBER Advanced offerings to its clients. Leveraging the power of the Medigate platform, TRIMEDX is taking technology enablement to the next level. 

The CYBER Advanced offering brings greater inventory accuracy through the collection and maintenance of key attributes of connected and connectable medical devices. It also provides real-time monitoring of vulnerabilities, alerts, recalls as well as the detection of potential suspicious behavior; along with more efficient remediation workflow and a supplier scorecard that allows clients to make more informed medical device purchasing decisions. It introduces an advanced cybersecurity risk score to gain visibility of device risk profile as well as overall security risk posture. This comes along with a dedicated CYBER team that proactively identifies cyber vulnerabilities and on-site CYBER specialists for all aspects of cybersecurity remediation.

The CAM Advanced solution transforms capital planning initiatives into a data-driven, objective process that establishes spending priorities and maximizes equipment ownership. The Advanced offering includes the TRIMEDX proprietary RUDR Score―a proprietary score that drives decision making around clinical asset replacement, upgrade, disposition, or reallocation. It also contains benchmarking of client data against national data on more than 4.2 million clinical assets in its data warehouse, as well as integration with the Medigate platform for utilization data and cyber risk scoring to support targeted decision making. 

“The healthcare industry is a mission-critical environment,” says Hummel. “In working with our early adopters of our advanced solutions, we have demonstrated a level of precision and accuracy along with reliability and credibility achieved in real time. TRIMEDX will operate in an even more proactive way for its clients.”