In May 2017, National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England and Scotland were virtually shut down for several days because of the global WannaCry cyberattack. The attack resulted in the cancellation of thousands of appointments and operations and some NHS services had to turn away noncritical emergencies. Up to 70,000 devices, including computers, MRI scanners, blood-storage refrigerators, and operating room equipment may have been affected. And in 2016, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles paid $17,000 in bitcoin to a hacker to unlock data that had been encrypted in an attack. Hospital staff struggled to deal with the loss of email and access to patient data.

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a new AI technique that will protect medical devices from malicious operating instructions in a cyberattack as well as other human and system errors. Complex medical devices such as CT (computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and ultrasound machines are controlled by instructions sent from a host PC. Abnormal or anomalous instructions introduce many potentially harmful threats to patients, such as radiation overexposure, manipulation of device components or functional manipulation of medical images. Threats can occur due to cyberattacks, human errors such as a technician's configuration mistake or host PC software bugs. As part of his Ph.D. research, BGU researcher Tom Mahler has developed a technique using artificial intelligence that analyzes the instructions sent from the PC to the physical components using a new architecture for the detection of anomalous instructions.