Global technology outage disrupts healthcare, emergency services
Date
7/21/2024 5:04:54 AM
(MENAFN) A global technology outage has severely impacted critical services worldwide, from air travel to emergency services, resulting in the cancellation of medical procedures and a temporary return to handwritten paper records in healthcare systems. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) general practitioners have faced significant challenges in accessing scans, blood test results, and patient histories due to the technical issues affecting the system used for booking patient appointments and viewing medical records. This disruption has led to considerable setbacks in patient care.
In the United States, major health centers such as the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reported that the outage was adversely affecting their patient services. Emergency 911 services in New Hampshire, which were initially unable to answer incoming calls despite being able to see them, were eventually restored. The cyber chaos, triggered by a flawed CrowdStrike software update that compromised Microsoft systems, has disrupted airports, clinics, and financial networks globally, highlighting the critical dependence on reliable software.
Hospitals across the U.S. have been struggling with issues related to Epic Systems Corp.'s widely used electronic health records system. According to an internal message to customers, Epic noted that the problem began after midnight Central Time, causing servers and workstations to crash and enter a reboot loop or display the "blue screen of death." An Epic spokesperson mentioned that while they can assist customers in monitoring system activity and prioritizing servers, they are also awaiting updates from CrowdStrike.
Memorial Sloan Kettering, a prominent cancer treatment center in the U.S., announced on its website the temporary suspension of any procedures requiring anesthesia due to the outage. This incident underscores the widespread disruption caused by the technology failure, affecting hospitals from New York to London to Paris, and straining global healthcare services.
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