Microsoft outage: NHS services across the country hit as GP booking system goes down
Microsoft’s global outage has hit key NHS services, with reports that its medical computer system EMIS is down.
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England that uses the system, issued a statement on its website and social media this morning saying: ‘Unfortunately there is a nationwide issue with EMIS Web, the clinical computer system used in GP surgeries.
‘This will impact our ability to book appointments/consult patients this morning. We apologize for the disruption.
It also said: ‘If you have a life-threatening medical emergency, call 999.’
The IT outage, which began last night, has caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down. Airport departure boards have also suddenly shut down, grounding flights and taking TV stations, airports and banks offline.
In the UK, the country’s largest train operator warned its passengers of delays due to “widespread IT issues”, while Ryanair warned of “potential disruption”.
Microsoft’s global outage has hit vital NHS services, with reports that its medical computer system EMIS is down
GTD Healthcare, which operates the system, issued a statement on its website and social media this morning saying there is a national issue that will impact the
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool, was one of the doctors to report problems and said it would have to shut down some services for safety reasons
The EMIS system allows doctors to make appointments, view patient data, prescribe prescriptions and make referrals.
On the social media platform X, some GPs report that they have to ‘go back to paper and pen’, while others say that it does not bother them.
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool, said: ‘We are currently experiencing a national outage of the GP record software EMIS. We do not yet know why and are awaiting further information.
‘This has consequences for the way in which the practice can safely see patients, prescribe medication, etc.
“We will be suspending some services for safety reasons.”
@GPforhire wrote: ‘Argh! No Emis!! Back to pen and paper. I hope nothing urgent comes in.’
Later, the same report added: ‘Gee, one of the nurses says it’s nationwide! Ouch.’
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley ‘There is a widespread IT problem affecting England and other countries.
‘We are currently unable to use our Cinical Software System EMIS, so we can only perform urgent tasks until the situation is resolved’
Solihull Healthcare Partnership: ‘Unfortunately there is a national problem with EMIS Web, our clinical computer system.
‘This is impacting our ability to book/consult patients this morning. We will update patients when we can. Our apologies for the disruption.’
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley was another that said it would have to reduce services due to the IT issues
EMIS offers a backup Business Continuity mode (BC mode), which allows clinics to ‘maintain full and continuous access to EMIS even when an adverse event causes the system to be temporarily unavailable’.
On X.com, family physician Dr. Nikita Kanani wrote: ‘Tips for IT outages: – If you are using EMIS, try BC mode. You can use local, network-free apps like Docman to retrieve crucial information. – Use a simple proforma for GP notes to keep track of data that you can upload later. – Disable inbound triage systems for the time being. – Update patient-facing sites.’
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.