Internet Resilience and the High Stakes for Modern Healthcare

Healthcare’s digital transformation has spurred next-generation advancements like remote patient monitoring and seamless electronic health record (EHR) access. But the resulting reliance on the digital infrastructure has unearthed a source of vulnerability for health systems: internet resilience. New data has exposed the high cost of digital disruptions, particularly in the healthcare sector where patient well-being hangs in the balance. Imagine a critical surgery being delayed because a doctor can’t access a patient’s records. Or a rural patient unable to connect for a potentially life-saving telemedicine appointment due to a network outage. These are not hypotheticals, but very real threats to modern healthcare.

Catchpoint’s Internet Resilience Report 2024 reveals that healthcare organizations face financial losses due to Internet outages and service degradations, to the tune of over $1 million a month for 43% of companies. And while this figure spans several industries, its implications for healthcare are concerning: 

• Medication errors: disruptions to automated drug dispensing systems can increase the risk of medication errors rates. The FDA already receives over 100,000 reports of suspected medication errors annually, with roughly 7 million Americans affected.
• Diagnostic delays: inaccessible patient records or imaging systems can cause delays in diagnosis and potentially jeopardize timely treatment and patient outcomes. 
• Compromised research and development: outages can impede access to research databases and slow down the development of new treatments.

In July 2024, the CrowdStrike outage laid bare the consequences of software dependence in healthcare. A botched update crippled IT systems, leading to delayed patient care, inaccessible records, and a chaotic return to manual processes in some hospitals. Estimates suggest the outage cost the healthcare sector close to $2 billion despite the initial issue being found and mitigated in just a few hours. 

This costly demonstration of vulnerability is not an isolated incident, but rather a symptom of the broader challenges outlined in the SRE Report 2025. As the report highlights, with the increased complexity of modern systems – essentially a sea of interconnected systems and cloud-based services – the resilience challenge is intensified. A single point of failure can trigger a cascading series of disruptions that can take several days, or longer, to correct. Effective site reliability engineering (SRE) requires continuous monitoring of all aspects of a system: applications, APIs, third party software, connectivity, regional ISP connectivity, local networks, DNS, BGP, etc. – all done from the user’s perspective and geographic location.

One of the biggest obstacles health systems face is the ability to proactively detect and address internet performance issues before any problems occur. Legacy monitoring tools can struggle to pinpoint the precise source of failures in the internet stack; that lack of granular visibility leaves healthcare providers blind to the effects on patient-critical applications until it’s too late. This is where a shift towards comprehensive observability becomes necessary. If organizations can monitor application performance from the end-user perspective, they can then identify and resolve issues before they impact patient care.  And while that long-term strategy is being implemented, healthcare organizations should take some other immediate steps to minimize risk:

• Establish temporary offline protocols: leaders should develop a clear plan for accessing and sharing patient information during network outages, including offline access to communication channels.
• Prioritize critical systems: grade the systems most vital to patient safety; establish clear RTO and RPO objectives that guide prioritization and backup strategies. 
• Combine APM+IPM Observability:Augment existing network and application performance monitoring with internet performance monitoring to get complete visibility.
• Conduct regular simulation exercises: simulate network outages to test incident response protocols and identify any weaknesses in the existing systems and course correct as needed.

Every second counts in healthcare and internet resilience has moved beyond being solely a security concern. By acknowledging the digital infrastructure’s fragility and taking steps to strengthen it, health systems can reap the benefits of digital healthcare without compromising patient safety. Now is the time for healthcare organizations to assess their internet resilience, implement the necessary strategies, and ensure their digital infrastructure is as robust as the care they provide.