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NHS IT staff hopeful about fix for Glasgow health board area IT system problems fixed in Glasgow health board area
(about 3 hours 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 is working again after a two-day crash saw hundreds of appointments and procedures cancelled.
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. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it still does not know what caused the problem which affected 11 hospitals.
It said patients should attend hospital appointments in Glasgow as normal. The health board said no patient information had been lost and data gathered during the crash would be manually added to update the system.
The computer fault affected up to 10 hospitals and caused problems accessing information such as x-rays, records, and referral letters. All patients with appointments on Thursday should attend as normal.
More than 700 patients were affected as outpatient appointments, inpatient procedures, day surgery cases and chemotherapy appointments were postponed. The computer system crash meant that 599 outpatient appointments were postponed along with 62 planned inpatient procedures and day cases and 48 chemotherapy patient treatments.
On Wednesday, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde made an "unreserved apology" over the problem. 'Unreserved apology'
No data lost NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC) chief executive Robert Calderwood reiterated his "unreserved apology" to patients and said those affected would be given new appointments.
The health board's chief executive, Robert Calderwood, said the issue arose after the software program Microsoft Active Directory became corrupted. "Although 709 patient episodes have had to be postponed our staff were able to see some 10,000 patients using manual back up systems," he said.
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. "I can also report today that some of the patients affected have already been re-appointed and will be seen in the next few days.
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. "Arrangements are now being made to ensure that all the other patients affected will be offered a re-appointment as quickly as is possible."
"Clearly, as the hospitals and the departments busy up and more and more users come on the system, that will be the test. Mr Calderwood said the "unprecedented" systems crash related to the health board's computer network and the way staff connected to clinical and administrative systems.
"But as it stands at the moment, all systems are operational." "The situation is that as users log on they go through a system called Microsoft Active Directory, a router system which recognises users and allows individual access to our clinical and administrative support systems," he explained.
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. "This was corrupted over the weekend which became apparent when staff logged on to the system on Tuesday after the holiday weekend."
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." Although the problem has been resolved, NHS GGC still does not know what caused it.
Maternity and emergency services have been maintained throughout. A statement from the health board said: "The platform on which NHS GGC's IT systems are built are in common with most large organisations in the UK and indeed the world.
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. Cause 'unknown'
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." "At this stage it remains unknown what exactly caused this problem to occur and this is one of the major issues and we continue to work closely with Microsoft to get to the root of the problem."
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. The statement said: "Our IT teams and our external experts are continuing to run full diagnostic checks to try and understand exactly what caused the problem in the first place."
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." "NHS GGC IT teams working in collaboration with international experts from our suppliers at Microsoft and Charteris will continue to closely monitor the situation as clinical staff begin their work today."
BBC Scotland understands that the IT systems crash affected patients with appointments at 11 hospitals. These were:
Maternity and emergency services were maintained throughout the crash.