NHS England has acknowledged that GP IT systems have been affected by the global IT disruption reportedly linked to Microsoft software and Crowdstrike anti-virus systems.
The problem has caused outages around the world for organisations including transport operators, media companies and healthcare providers.
According to a report on Sky News it is believed to be related to an issue between Microsoft and Crowdstrike, although it is not known if the same issue is affecting all organisations with an outage.
NHS England has published a statement confirming reports of problems with GP systems.
Disruptions
A spokesperson said: “The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.
“The NHS has long standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.
“There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they usually would.
“Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise. Only contact your GP if it’s urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111."
It later added: “There are also some issues with administrative systems in hospitals that mean staff are having to work manually from paper to manage certain tasks but in the majority of hospitals, care is continuing as normal."
Health and Social Care Northern Ireland also published a statement saying around two-thirds of GP practices in the region had been affected, as well as hospital services including digital endoscopy, radiotherapy, booking systems for operating theatres and access to staff systems.
It said the disruptions were related to supplier systems rather than its core systems.
"HSC technology teams are working intensively with third party vendors to rectify the issue by removing the impacted component and will continue bringing systems back to normal during the course of the day, as well as working with operational teams to find and fix impacted services," it said. "It is not currently understood to be caused by a cyber attack."
Bug from update
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, published a statement from cyber security expert Dan Card stating: “It looks like a bug to a regular security update, rather than any form of ‘mega cyber attack’, but this is still causing worldwide challenges and is likely to require a large number of people to make manual remedial steps.
“Companies should make sure their IT teams are well supported as it will be a difficult and highly stressful weekend for them as they help customers of all kinds. People often forget the people that are running around fixing things.”
Update: According to BBC News Crowdstrike has issued a fix for the problem but there is speculation it will have to be issued to every affected device.
