More resilience for hospital IT

Cyberattacks on hospitals are no longer an exception – they threaten the stability of medical care and pose enormous challenges for clinics. The Universitätsklinikum Bonn (UKB) has teamed up with Telekom MMS to develop a prototype situation overview with the aim of enabling a quick, targeted, and secure response in the event of a crisis in the future. At its core is a digital situation overview that displays critical information in real time and enables informed decisions to be made.

• Faster and more informed decisions in the event of a crisis and greater resilience to cyberattacks
• Reduced economic risks through early detection of IT disruptions and targeted response
• Greater patient and care safety through stable processes

Cyberattacks on hospitals are on the rise – sometimes with serious consequences for patient care. As a maximum care hospital, the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) also faces the challenge of maintaining critical processes – such as operations and the preservation of vital functions in intensive care patients – even in the event of IT failures.

In consultation with the UKB, Telekom MMS developed a system that enables quick, informed decisions in an emergency and minimizes the impact on hospital operations and patient care.

Together with UKB, Telekom MMS has designed and prototyped a real-time overview of the overall situation. The solution integrates heterogeneous data sources – from IT systems and medical devices to patient flows and personnel planning – into a clear dashboard. AI-supported forecasts help to identify bottlenecks at an early stage. In the event of disruptions or security incidents, the system displays the affected processes, suggests alternatives, and provides specific recommendations for action.

The situation overview can be used independently of the main systems and offers role-based user views – for example, for hospital management, IT, or nursing staff. This allows processes to be rescheduled flexibly and resources to be reallocated in a targeted manner. The technical basis is provided by the Splunk platform, supplemented by an AI module for forecasting system states. The UX design was based on user stories and interviews with stakeholders from everyday hospital life.

The new situation assessment system has the potential to offer the UKB a significant advantage: for the first time, it brings together data from previously separate systems—such as the hospital information system, asset management, monitoring, and SIEM systems—in a central, visually prepared platform. This provides a comprehensive overview of the status of the hospital—both during normal operations and in the event of a crisis.

On this basis, specialists and decision-makers can react more quickly and in a more targeted manner, identify risks at an early stage, and initiate measures. This not only increases the security of supply, but also strengthens the resilience of the entire hospital operation against cyber threats.

The UKB treats around 550,000 patients per year, employs approximately 9,900 staff, and has total assets of €1.8 billion. In addition to 3,500 medical and dental students, more than 600 people are trained in numerous healthcare professions each year. The UKB ranks first among university hospitals (UK) in North Rhine-Westphalia in the Focus clinic list, was able to raise nearly €100 million in third-party funding for research, development, and teaching in 2024, and has the second-highest case mix index (case severity) of any university hospital in Germany. The F.A.Z. Institute has honored the UKB for the fourth time in a row in the categories “Germany's Training Champions” and “Germany's Most Desirable Employers".