Systems Engineering for Survival: A Physician's Guide to Emergency Management

Podcast: Hack the Plant (LS 35 · TOP 3% what is this?)
Episode: Systems Engineering for Survival: A Physician's Guide to Emergency Management
Pub date: 2026-02-17

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Our host Bryson Bort welcomes Dr. Natalie Sullivan, Medical Director of the Emergency Response Medical Group and an emergency medicine physician at a D.C. area hospital. Trained in EMS and disaster and operational medicine, Natalie turned her attention to the critical intersection of clinical medicine, patient safety, and cybersecurity resilience after experiencing a prolonged ransomware attack on a major hospital. Dr. Sullivan lays out the disaster preparedness cycle, and the many vectors of risks for hospitals.

How does a cyberattack on one hospital lead to increased cardiac arrest mortality at the hospital three blocks away? Why is a generation of "digital native" doctors a hidden vulnerability in an analog emergency? And what happens when a hospital's reliance on these "tightly coupled" systems—like water, power, and the Medical IoT—collapses during a ransomware event?

“We are critical infrastructure, but we're deeply, deeply dependent on the surrounding critical infrastructure,” Dr. Sullivan said.

Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.

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