THE government’s main IT system for Health and its emergency back-up failed in a “critical incident” last week which forced the Hospital to cancel more than 30 procedures.
Chief information officer Jason Whitfield said they would be submitting a detailed report because of the seriousness of the incident. He explained that the problem occurred when a routine software update from a third-party provider – one of between 200 and 300 such updates annually – was being installed.
As users tried to log in on the morning of Friday 23 February, they could not access the system, prompting a flood of calls for help. It was, Mr Whitfield said, “an effect like the power had been switched off”.
The incident triggered a “priority one red alert”, prompting a switch to the back-up server but when that failed to resolve the problem, the incident was escalated to “critical”.
One senior Health official described last Friday as “already a difficult day” for the Hospital because demand for beds was outstripping supply. As a result of the IT failure hospital staff had to cancel 34 procedures, and they implemented special measures to dispense medicines as patient data and emails became inaccessible. All procedures have since been rescheduled, it has been confirmed.
Chief operating officer for acute services Claire Thompson said: “In terms of patient safety, no concerns have been raised.”
In a statement, Chris Bown, interim chief officer for Health and Community Services, said: “During the investigation process it became clear that the IT system issue related to a third party software update which was carried out last week.
“The software was stopped from running on Friday afternoon and this resulted in an immediate improvement. We are now working closely with the third-party provider to identify the root cause of the problem and a large amount of systems diagnostic data are being examined.
“Our IT system engineers have a high level of confidence that this is not a cyber-related incident.
“We would like to apologise to all those individuals who were affected by the issue, and thank Health and Community Services teams for quickly and professionally invoking business continuity processes last Friday.”
