Health service IT systems are back online following Friday’s global outage, according to NHS England. However, the aftermath of the disruption is still being felt, particularly in GP services where appointments may need to be rebooked.
The faulty security software that affected more than eight million computers worldwide caused chaos in transport networks and health services. Experts are working tirelessly to fix all the affected computers, a process that is expected to continue into the coming week.
Despite the challenges, the NHS is urging patients with appointments this week to attend as normal unless told otherwise. A spokesperson for the NHS stated, “Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum, however there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us.”
The British Medical Association has acknowledged the efforts of GPs in trying to catch up with lost work, but emphasized that they will need time to recover from the impact of the IT outage. The EMIS platform, which many GPs rely on for appointment bookings and patient records, was affected by the outage, forcing some practices to resort to pen and paper to serve their patients.
The IT outage was caused by a faulty update to CrowdStrike antivirus software, which crashed Microsoft systems. While the issue has been fixed, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz admitted that it may take some time for all computer systems to be fully restored.
In addition to the healthcare sector, other industries are also facing ongoing disruption. Airlines have largely resumed normal operations, with the number of cancelled flights decreasing. However, some flights to and from the UK were still affected, with Europe’s largest travel group TUI cancelling several flights and apologizing for the continued impact of the IT outage.
As the recovery process continues, organizations are working diligently to minimize the disruption caused by the global IT outage and restore normalcy to affected services.
