FERMANAGH’S health system and other public services were impacted by last weekend’s global IT outage, which saw widespread disruption right across the world.
Believed to be one of the worst IT failures of all time, the problem was caused by a faulty update by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which affected Microsoft Windows systems and impacted businesses, banks, airlines and various other industries across the globe on Friday.
Fallout from the disruption was still impacting some systems up until the time of going to print yesterday (Tuesday).
Locally, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council experienced issues at its leisure centres, with the outage knocking out its ability to accept card payments. The Council had the issue resolved by lunchtime on Friday.
The biggest disruption was to the local health system, however, with GPs unable to access patient records or prescribe patients medication, and disruption to some hospital services. The ambulance service and out of hours GP service were not impacted.
On Monday, the Department of Health issued a statement outlining the ongoing impact of the problem, noting three major hospital systems and one GP system had been affected by the outage – the Epic Electronic Care Record, the Varian Radiotherapy System, the Allocate eRostering System, and the EMIS GP System.
“All teams, including affected GP practices, implemented their business continuity plans with a focus on ensuring those clinically urgent patients were managed first. This is a normal part of the HSC contingency arrangements,” said a Department spokesman.
The spokesman noted the Epic Electronic Care Record system had been restored by 9am on Friday morning, with integrated technologies restored by Friday afternoon. The last of the affected services was endoscopy imaging, which was restored by 6pm on Friday evening.
The Department said the EMIS GP system was mostly brought back online by Saturday, with the system “operational and tested” by 9pm on Saturday evening. However, it noted it may be later this week before some “non-core interfaces” that would no affect direct patient care would be resolved.’
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