A widespread network failure at two NHS data centres in Wales has now been resolved but there have been warnings that some areas may experience a “backlog”.
Wales’ Department of Health and Social Services tweeted around 3pm yesterday to confirm there was a “technical issue affecting two NHS Wales Data Centres”. The NHS Wales Informatics Service has since confirmed that all IT systems are back up and it is now launching an investigation into the incident.
Meanwhile they are warning patients that they may experience a “backlog”. (see full tweets below)
The Aneurin Bevan University Hospital Board (ABUHB) and Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) both confirmed on social media that they had been affected.
The National Cyber Security Centre confirmed to Digital Health News that it was “not a cyber attack” but a “technical glitch”.
Dr David Bailey, Chair BMA’s Welsh Council, said: “BMA Cymru Wales has heard reports from some members that they are experiencing issues affecting emails, the internet and other systems, in both primary and secondary care.
“This will no doubt cause a major disruption to the NHS, at a time when demand is already unprecedented.”
One GP told the BBC that the situation was “chaos” and said: “I can’t do anything. I need this system for everything.”
The system failure meant staff could not get phone numbers of patients to contact them so as to cancel appointments.
Other problems included the fact notes from appointments could not be typed up and saved.”
It was not just Wales which experienced problems as there was reports of operations and appointments being cancelled in Manchester following an IT failure.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has confirmed it experienced a network outage yesterday which lasted around four hours with patients asked only to attend A&E for serious or life-threatening conditions.
The trust later confirmed all systems were back up and running.
The NHS Wales Informatics Service have confirmed that all systems are now back although there may be a backlog affecting some areas. They have assured us that there were no data security issues. 1/2
— DHSSWales (@DHSSwales) January 24, 2018
The cause of the technical issue that affected two NHS Wales Data Centres remains under investigation 2/2
— DHSSWales (@DHSSwales) January 24, 2018
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience during the issues affecting national IT systems earlier today, and thank you to NWIS colleagues for prompt action to resolve this. https://t.co/qxYs6dR64K
— Powys Health Board (@PTHBhealth) January 24, 2018
2/2 Thank you to our staff for responding so quickly and keeping our services running and apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused to our patients.
— Aneurin Bevan UHB (@AneurinBevanUHB) January 24, 2018
29 January 2018 @ 11:14
Shouldn’t health IT infrastructure be taken as seriously as other safety conscious institutions (likes NATS the air traffic control service) to ensure that systems are redundant to catastrophic failure. At best, these outages cause huge waste, at a magnitude of hundreds of thousands of pounds (I need to do the maths properly some day), and at the worst they put patient lives in danger. The technology exists to dynamically reroute network traffic… this kind of error shouldn’t happen at a national leve.