IT outages hit thousands of services

Thousands of GP practices — and some other localised services — are without their IT systems today, due to global outages also affecting banking, media and aviation.

All EMIS GP IT systems, which are used by more than half of the 8,000-odd GP practices in England, were down. It was leaving many practices unable to book appointments or consult with patients first thing on Friday morning.

This will quickly lead to a backlog of appointments and likely pressure on other urgent care.

Patient-facing digital services linked to EMIS also appeared to be down, such as records access via the NHS app.

The National Pharmacy Association said some community pharmacy services were down — such as “accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries” were disrupted. It’s unclear if that is also caused by EMIS, or other systems.

Read full story (paywalled)

Source: HSJ, 19 July 2024