Over the weekend, the NHS announced that IT systems are back online after Friday’s global outage. Although there may still be disruption, particularly with GP services who may need time to rebook appointments. The faulty security software affected over eight million computers worldwide, instigating chaos within transport networks, as well as health services. Even though some of the IT systems have been fixed, crowds of sectors are still facing ongoing disruption.
The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, said GPs required time to catch up with lost work due to Friday’s NHS IT outage. It affected the EMIS platform, which many GPs use to manage appointment bookings and patient records, including sending prescriptions to pharmacies. Friday had been “one of the toughest single days in recent times for GPs across England,” said the BMA. Many GPs were compelled to return to pen and paper to serve their patients without a clinical IT system.
CrowdStrike antivirus software triggered the outage caused by a faulty update that crashed Microsoft systems. George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, confirmed that the issue had been fixed on Friday but admitted that it could take “some time” for some computer systems to be restored. On Saturday, the proportion of cancelled flights fell worldwide, as airlines resumed normal operations. However, Europe’s largest travel group, TUI, said the outage still caused delays. It canceled 11 flights from the UK on Sunday and stated five more cancellations for Monday. The company apologized for the ongoing impact of the IT outage.
NHS England advised patients with appointments this week to attend as usual unless informed otherwise. The spokesperson thanked NHS staff for their hard work and said they expected to keep further disruption to a minimum. However, there might be some delays as services recover. With GP’s needing to rebook appointments, but they urge people to bear with them. Experts have warned that the process of fixing all the computers would continue this week.
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