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October 13, 2024
Scotland’s largest health board has said its IT system may be operational again after three days of problems.
However, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it would only be certain that the problem had been fixed when more staff started logging on to the system.
It said patients should attend hospital appointments in Glasgow as normal.
The computer fault affected up to 10 hospitals and caused problems accessing information such as x-rays, records, and referral letters.
More than 700 patients were affected as outpatient appointments, inpatient procedures, day surgery cases and chemotherapy appointments were postponed.
On Wednesday, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde made an “unreserved apology” over the problem.
No data lost
The health board’s chief executive, Robert Calderwood, said the issue arose after the software program Microsoft Active Directory became corrupted.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Programme that the software, which is a router system designed to give individual users access to clinical and administrative systems, was working again.
Mr Calderwood explained: “As of 2am this morning, our technical teams, supported by Microsoft engineers, have re-run and re-profiled all of the IT systems that were affected and they are all operational as we speak
He said no information had been lost, and any data gathered from appointments and treatments over the past three days would be manually added to the health board’s computer systems.
Mr Calderwood added: “In the last 48 hours we had interaction with 10,700 patients and we’ve only had to cancel 709, and we unreservedly apologised, and I personally apologised, to these patients.”
Maternity and emergency services have been maintained throughout.
Labour MSP Neil Findlay raised concern over the possibility that a similar failure could occur again in other health board areas, which may be using the same system.
He said: “I think we definitely need some sort of independent review of IT across the NHS in Scotland to ensure that the systems are fit for purpose and there are real contingency plans in place, should there be similar problems in the future.”
Mr Calderwood said the health board would attempt to identify how the software program became corrupted to ensure any lessons could be learned and resilience improved.
He added: “The other thing is to look at the access to our operational back-up systems in case what IT people regard as a ‘never’ event happens again.”
Source BBC News