@mikkaels @EUCommission By the same lieu that a programmer deserves to be rewarded for writing a useful program, a programmer deserves to be punished for writing a proprietary one.

It's quite simple really - there needs to be a requirement that for each and every medical device, the source code under a free license of the software needs to provided, otherwise it's criminal to pay for it (with such arrangement, the programmers would be paid the same (programmers typically get paid a fixed wage, no matter how profitable the software they write for a business is)).

That software then should be published and checked by many people and any vulnerabilities and mistakes worked out.

As for the devices themselves, someone in the hospital should be assigned with setting the hospital's signatures for each device and keeping the software on each machine updated.