Medtronic: bad stents & hackable pacer device

The biomed company Medtronic seems to be taking a hit in the news recently, with a high death rate from a stent graft system and an automatic defibrillator monitor that sends un-encrypted medical data:

New data point to greater deaths in patients receiving Medtronic Inc's AneuRx stent graft system, which treats artery bulges in the abdomen, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday.

AneuRx is used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysm or AAA, a life threatening condition in which the aortic artery bulges and can burst -- often without prior symptoms.

About 1.2 million Americans have such a bulge, according to Medtronic, but only 15 percent are diagnosed and half are never treated.

and:

A common new technology for monitoring defibrillators is vulnerable to hacking and even to reprogramming that could stop the devices from delivering a lifesaving shock, according to research to be released Wednesday.

In the model researchers studied, transmissions from the defibrillator to the bedside monitor are not encrypted, which means that someone intercepting the transmissions could retrieve such data as the patient's birth date, medical ID number and, in some cases, Social Security number.