Siemens Healthineers has secured a $6.9 million Phase I contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop AI-based cybersecurity tools for hospital medical devices.
The work will be conducted under ARPA-H's Universal Patching and Remediation for Autonomous Defense (UPGRADE) program, with Siemens Healthineers serving as principal research institution for the Secure Healthcare Infrastructure Enhancement and Defense (SHIELD) project. Research partners include Siemens Corporation, Axonius, and Kraetonics, the company said.
SHIELD aims to develop AI cyberthreat solutions to optimize security updates for hospital equipment, with a focus on minimizing disruptions to patient care, according to the company. The average time to apply critical security updates to hospital equipment is currently 491 days, leaving critical vulnerabilities open to exploitation, Siemens noted.
