Florida faces growing pressure to secure healthcare data from foreign cyber threats.
Protecting our personal data from falling into the wrong hands often feels like a full-time job. Keeping our personal health data, well, personal, is even harder.
Florida’s hospitals, clinics, and care facilities are on the front lines of a threat that most patients never see coming. In 2024, the healthcare sector was the most targeted industry in the country for cyberattacks. A major reason is that Chinese-made medical devices have quietly embedded themselves throughout our healthcare system — bringing with them a direct line to Beijing.
The proliferation of Chinese-made healthcare devices that monitor vital signs such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, temperature, respiration, and more has even prompted the FDA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to sound the alarm. Both agencies have warned about a “backdoor” in devices that allows bad actors to easily alter device configurations and gain access to patient data.
In Florida, Attorney General James Uthmeier has acknowledged the threat and is taking action. In recent months, he launched the Consumer Harm from International Nefarious Actors (CHINA) Prevention Unit to counter CCP threats in Florida. The CHINA Prevention Unit focuses on investigating and litigating companies that unlawfully share data with China and other foreign nations, putting Floridians’ data at risk.
Lawmakers are back in Tallahassee to finalize the state’s budget, with healthcare comprising a very large portion of it. Here’s the problem: without action, the Legislature will approve a healthcare spending plan that effectively funds the same Chinese-made devices giving Beijing access to patient data. That is unacceptable.
Protecting Floridians’ data should not be delayed any longer. Uthmeier has taken the first step; now it’s time for Florida’s lawmakers to complete the job.
Recent polling suggests Floridians recognize these threats, with general election voters indicating strong support for legislation banning Chinese-made medical devices that transmit patient data to Beijing, and they will reward candidates who vote for such a ban.
The Legislature is poised to pass a budget subsidizing these medical devices, and as voters prepare to elect new candidates for the state legislature, now is the time for current and future members to take the next step in protecting Floridians’ data by removing Chinese spy technology from medical facilities.
The groundwork is already laid: the votes are there, and public support is as well. The remaining question is one of political will.
Doug Wheeler serves as director of the George Gibbs Center for Economic Prosperity at the James Madison Institute.
Originally found in the Florida Politics.
