Cybersecurity in Interventional Radiology: A Clinical Imperative 

When a contrast injector misbehaves mid-case, every interventional radiologist feels it instantly — the workflow halts, the team scrambles, and the patient waits on the table. Now imagine that same disruption caused not by a mechanical glitch, but by a ransomware attack that has locked every computer in the suite. The PACS is down. The EMR is inaccessible. The scheduling system is gone. This is not a hypothetical. It has happened, and it will happen again. 

Cybersecurity has long been treated as an “IT problem” — something handled in a back room by people in hoodies. That framing is dangerously wrong. For physicians who rely as heavily on networked technology as interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons, and interventional cardiologists do, a cyber incident is a clinical event. It threatens patient safety, disrupts care continuity, and can financially devastate a practice overnight.