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NHS IT staff hopeful about fix for Glasgow health board area NHS IT staff hopeful about fix for Glasgow health board area
(about 1 hour later)
Scotland's largest health board has said its IT system may be operational again after three days of problems.Scotland's largest health board has said its IT system may be operational again after three days of problems.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it would be certain the problem had been fixed after staff logged on later. 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.It said patients should attend hospital appointments in Glasgow as normal.
The computer system fault affected up to 10 hospitals and caused problems accessing information such as x-rays, records, and referral letters. The computer fault affected up to 10 hospitals and caused problems accessing information such as x-rays, records, and referral letters.
More than 590 patients have had their treatment or appointments postponed. More than 700 patients were affected as outpatient appointments, inpatient procedures, day surgery cases and chemotherapy appointments were postponed.
On Wednesday NHS GGC made an "unreserved apology" over the problem saying it had only restored "a basic level of IT service to enable some of the clinical services affected to resume normally". On Wednesday, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde made an "unreserved apology" over the problem.
The issue, which arose after a server crash and a subsequent failure in the back-up system, left clinicians unable to access services such as patient records. No data lost
It resulted in outpatient appointments, inpatient procedures, day surgery cases and chemotherapy appointments being postponed. 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.
"Clearly, as the hospitals and the departments busy up and more and more users come on the system, that will be the test.
"But as it stands at the moment, all systems are operational."
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.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."