If you have been in the hospital for an extended amount of time, it may have been to fight a dangerous virus that had the potential to injure or kill you if it was not dealt with correctly. Dangerous viruses are something that doctors and nurses deal with every day, and in most hospitals the workers try hard to reduce the symptoms of these viruses and eventually eliminate the sickness. Yet there is another kind of virus that is plaguing hospitals and can be just as deadly. This virus can’t be remedied with an intravenous medication or a therapy. It is a computer virus.

According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, computer viruses are becoming an increasing problem as they wreck the electronic hospital systems. According to Kevin Fu, an expert on medical-device security from the University of Michigan, medical equipment is often attached to computers. Most of the machines that you or your loved ones may rely on during a hospital visit are connected to PCs which are increasingly susceptible to computer viruses. This means that the medical devices themselves are vulnerable to viruses and can be shut off or may dysfunction if the computer is affected.

Medical equipment is often hooked up to systems that are running older versions of Windows, and can’t modify or upgrade the system because it would cause that equipment to dysfunction. This means that in many hospitals, the devices that keep men and women alive are connected to PCs with outdated models of Windows. These earlier programs are often more susceptible to viruses than the recent updates are. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declares that many computers in hospitals can’t download antivirus ware because of other dangers that this would bring on. Because of this, many systems have to be taken offline regularly to remove the malware that accumulates on the outdated system.

Kevin Fu says that conventional malware is rampant in hospitals because the medical devices use unpatched systems. Fu says that there is little recourse for hospitals when the manufacturer won’t allow OS updates or security patches to be installed on the computers. So far, no deaths have been reported that were attributed to the malware on a computer that was connected to medical equipment, but as the computers and Windows versions get older, the potential for a tragic death of this sort will become more and more possible. Also, some people have been injured by the malware on the computers in recent days. Forbes reports that women with high-risk pregnancies are normally given fetal monitors and put in intensive-care wards. These monitors can give slower notifications because of the malware on the computers that they are connected to.

In September, the Government Accountability Office issued a report warning all hospitals of the possibility of medical device hacks. The report said that computerized implanted defibrillators and insulin pumps could be hacked by men and women who sent viruses that affected the machines. The FDA was told to address the issue, but has not yet announced a warning on their website. Forbes says that malware is not just a problem that affects consumers and businesses, but a health risk that could end up costing lives in the future. If a hospital has the ability to take precautions against malware, then they should do so immediately. If they don’t have that ability, then the nurses and doctors should monitor the computers vigilantly to eliminate the dangers of a malfunctioning computer that could shut off machines and eventually take the life of a patient. Contact a medical malpractice attorney today if your loved one was killed or you were injured by a medical malpractice mistake that was connected to the malware viruses on a hospital computer.