Microsoft outage: Cancer patients unable to get chemo and diabetics left without essential insulin drugs as NHS computer system chaos spreads
Cancer patients are being forced to skip treatments and diabetics are left without life-saving medications due to an ongoing global IT outage at Microsoft.
General practitioners throughout the region are also affected: GPs have difficulty making appointments, viewing patient data, prescribing prescriptions and referring patients.
MailOnline has also learned that chemotherapy provision in some parts of the NHS has also been hit.
A patient being treated for stage 4 cancer at Christie Hospital in Manchester, who wished to remain anonymous, said several cancer patients are unable to keep their weekly appointments.
They told this website: ‘Due to the global IT outage, no one can receive chemotherapy treatment here because all the data about the patient’s dosage and type of chemotherapy is only kept in the computer system. There are no paper copies.’
Father Grant Ciccone, from Deptford in south-east London, is one patient affected by the IT outage who tells MailOnline he can no longer get the insulin he needs to keep his diabetes stable.
Microsoft’s global outage has hit vital NHS services, with reports that its medical computer system EMIS is down
A patient undergoing treatment for stage 4 cancer at Christie Hospital in Manchester, who wished to remain anonymous, said several cancer patients have been unable to keep their weekly appointments.
‘There is a very full waiting room with people waiting in the hope that the system will be fixed, but I have decided not to wait. That means I will miss my chemotherapy dose for this week.
“I think it’s ridiculous that there is no paper copy of a patient’s treatment.”
A spokesperson for Christie NHS Foundation Trust confirmed they have been affected by the global IT issue.
“This IT outage is expected to impact chemotherapy and immunotherapy services and some internal hospital systems,” the researchers said.
‘Patients who have an appointment should show up as usual unless they have been contacted in advance by our team. This also applies to patients who have an appointment for systemic cancer treatments. They should show up as usual unless they have been contacted in advance.
‘Some chemotherapy and immunotherapy appointments have already been rescheduled and we are working with our suppliers and partners to resolve the issue and have plans in place to minimise disruption.
Another patient, this time with diabetes, said he could not get the medications he needed to live.
Father Grant Ciccone, from Deptford in south-east London, told MailOnline he has run out of the insulin injections he needs to control his type 1 diabetes and can no longer get to the chemist because of the IT glitch.
“I can’t order the insulin I need to stay alive. I’m out of two types of insulin that I need,” he said.
‘I don’t know when I can get a prescription because the GP’s website is also down and no one is answering the phone.’
Diabetics who do not have the necessary insulin can suffer from a life-threatening condition: diabetic ketoacidosis.
Insulin, which people without diabetes produce naturally, in this case leads to a harmful buildup of a chemical called ketones in the blood.
Ketones are produced when the body burns fat. It is normal to have some of these substances in the body. However, if the levels get too high, they can make the blood slightly acidic and damage organs.
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England that uses the system, said its services had been affected by the outage
Another primary care provider, Solihull Healthcare Partnership, said the ability to book appointments would be affected by the EMIS outage
Several GP posts have also been affected by a malfunction in the EMIS system, which is used by primary care providers to make appointments, view patient data, order prescriptions and make referrals.
A GP practice manager in Berkshire told this website: ‘We are completely doomed.
“We can’t see patients, our systems are down. It’s not clinically safe to treat patients because we can’t see their notes.”
Dr Darren Simpson, a GP in Wallsend, Newcastle, added: ‘We’re a bit stuck. EMIS is the entire GP record – all the letters, hospital results, everything we document and patient bookings are done through EMIS.
‘When we log in, it only shows ‘Network Error’.
‘If a patient calls with an acute problem, we can of course still see him and we write handwritten prescriptions.
“We can’t see their full medical records, look at their results or check what medications they’re taking.”
MailOnline has contacted EMIS for comment.
But in a warning the company sent to GPs this morning, which was seen on this website, it said: ‘We are aware that users are still unable to access EMIS Web’.
‘We are experiencing issues with a third party that are impacting organizations around the world. We are working with the relevant parties to restore service as quickly as possible.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We will keep you updated on the progress of this work.”
An NHS England spokesperson confirmed the issue, saying: ‘The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointments and patient records system, which is causing disruption to most GP practices.’
‘The NHS has long had measures in place to manage the disruption, including the use of paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual telephone systems to contact your GP.
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‘There are currently no known impacts on 999 or the emergency services, so people should continue to use these services as they normally would.’
They added that patients should continue to keep their appointments unless otherwise instructed.
MailOnline also contacted NHS England about the implications for chemotherapy services.
The IT outage, which began last night, caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down. Flight information boards at airports also suddenly shut down, grounding flights and taking TV stations, airports and banks offline.
In the UK, the country’s largest train operator has warned passengers of delays due to “widespread IT issues”, while airline Ryanair warned of “potential disruption”.
US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has admitted responsibility for the flaw, saying on its website that it is “working on it.”
Sky News viewers were presented with a static message on their TVs apologising for the service being ‘cut off’ at 6am when broadcasting was due to start.
It read: ‘We apologise for the interruption of this broadcast. We hope to restore the Sky News broadcast shortly.’
Ryanair also appears to have encountered the problem. The company posted an appeal on its website asking passengers to arrive at the airport three hours earlier. The organisation blamed the problem on a ‘third party IT issue, which is outside Ryanair’s control and which is affecting all airlines operating within its network’.
The issue is affecting businesses all over the world, with online reports saying Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, the US and the UK are all affected.
Just two months ago, Microsoft was hit with another major outage when Bing.com, Microsoft’s search engine, went down. The problem had apparently spread to the brand’s API (application programming interface), taking down services like DuckDuckGo.
The outage reportedly also affected ChatGPT and Ecosia. Despite Google’s dominance in the world of web search, Bing’s API has numerous high-profile clients.
In several reports about X, users reported receiving a blank page or a 429 HTTP code error when logging in.
Users reported that both Bing.com and DuckDuckGo loaded, but neither produced search results when a query was typed.
Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world. The outage has consequences for almost all sectors of the global economy. Supermarkets and cafes, including Morrisons, Waitrose and the bakery chain Gail’s, can no longer accept card payments.
In a sign of the global impact of the IT outage, passengers slept in the hallways of Los Angeles International Airport, huge lines formed at terminals across Spain and in Delhi, workers set up a whiteboard to record departing planes.