Nottingham University Hospitals IT issues resolved after power outage

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has confirmed that issues with its IT systems following a power outage have been resolved and the trust is now back online.

The outage occurred at 8am on Tuesday 31 October, with The Sunday Times health editor Shaun Lintern reporting on Twitter (X) that the “serious power failure”has led to effects such as “knocking out computers and Wi-Fi trust wide” and supposedly “impacted the blood transfusion system meaning delays to elective surgery”.

Lintern further reported on the platform that the power failure was in the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system. The outage came after the trust declared a critical incident on 30 October with 220 people in its A&E department and 120 people waiting to be admitted.

It is unknown exactly how long the power at the trust was out for, but Lintern confirmed on Twitter (X) shortly after 4pm on 31 October that the power was back on.

A statement from NUH shared directly with Digital Health News read: “Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust can confirm that we experienced issues with our IT systems following a power outage at 8am on 31 October, however these issues are now resolved.

“During this time we reverted to our standard offline processes and acknowledge that there may have been delays as a result of working in this way and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

“Patient safety is always our top priority, and we would like to thank colleagues for their continued efforts and swift response to help rectify the problem. We can confirm that no elective surgeries were cancelled or delayed as a result of this outage.”

Outages in the health system are not uncommon, as proved back in May when repeated outages to EMIS Web caused “significant disruption” to GP surgeries.