Global technology outage disrupts healthcare and emergency services

(MENAFN) A global technological 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. General practitioners in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) have faced significant challenges in accessing scans, blood test results and patient histories due to technical issues with the system used to book patient appointments and view medical records. The disruption has led to significant setbacks in patient care.

In the United States, major healthcare centers such as the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reported that the outage had negatively impacted their patient care. New Hampshire’s 911 emergency services, initially unable to answer incoming calls despite being able to see them, were eventually restored. The cyber chaos, caused by a flawed CrowdStrike software update that compromised Microsoft systems, has disrupted airports, clinics and financial networks worldwide, underscoring the critical reliance on reliable software.

Hospitals across the U.S. are experiencing issues with Epic Systems Corp.’s widely used electronic medical records system. According to an internal message to customers, Epic noted that the issue 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 said they can help customers monitor system activity and prioritize servers, but that they are also waiting for updates from CrowdStrike.

Memorial Sloan Kettering, a leading cancer treatment center in the U.S., announced on its website the temporary suspension of all procedures requiring anesthesia due to the outage. The incident underscores the widespread disruption caused by the technological glitch, which has affected hospitals from New York to London to Paris and strained healthcare systems worldwide.

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