Microsoft‘s global outage has hit vital NHS services, with reports that the medical computer system EMIS isn’t working.
The EMIS system allows GPs to book appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions and make referrals.
Speaking to MailOnline a GP practice manager in Berkshire said: ‘We are completely dead in the water.
‘We can’t see any patients are systems are down. It’s not clinically safe to treat patients because we can’t see their notes.
‘Can’t give out prescriptions and even if we do hand write them the problem is also affecting the pharmacies. It’s affecting the whole area and hospitals are in an even worse situation.’
The global Microsoft outage has hit vital NHS services, according to reports that medical computer system EMIS is not working
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England using the system this morning issued a statement on its website and on social media, saying: ‘Unfortunately there is a national issue with EMIS Web — the clinical computer system used within GP practices.
‘This will affect our ability to book appointments/consult with patients this morning. We apologise for the disruption.
It added: ‘If you have a life-threatening medical emergency, please dial 999.’
MailOnline has contacted EMIS for comment.
The IT fault, which started last night, has caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down, prompting departure boards to suddenly turn off at airports, grounding flights and knocking TV channels, airports and banks offline.
In the UK, Britain’s biggest train country told passengers to expect delays due to ‘widespread IT issues’, while Ryanair warned of ‘potential disruption’.
GTD Healthcare which runs the system this morning issued a statement on its website and on social media there a national issue that will impact the
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool, was one reporting problems, saying it would need to pause some services on safety grounds
On the social media platform X some GPs are reporting having to ‘go back to paper and pen’, while others are saying they are unaffected.
Ellergreen Medical Centre an NHS GP practice in Liverpool: ‘Currently there is a national outage of the GP record software EMIS. We are not aware of why as yet and are waiting further information.
‘This will impact on how the practice can safely see patients, issue medications etc.
‘We will be pausing some services on safety grounds.’
@GPforhire wrote: ‘Argh! No Emis!! Back to pen and paper. Hope nothing urgent comes in.’
Later the same account account added: ‘Blimey, one of the nurses says its nationwide! Yikes.’
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley ‘There is a widespread IT problem effecting England and other Countries.
‘Currently we are unable to use our Cinical Software System EMIS so we will only be able to complete urgent duties till the situation is sorted’
Solihull Healthcare Partnership: ‘Unfortunately there is a national issue with EMIS Web – our clinical computer system.
‘This will affect our ability to book/consult with patients this morning. We will update patients when we can. We apologise for the disruption.’
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley was another saying it would need to restrict services due to the IT problems
EMIS offers a backup Business Continuity, or BC mode, which allows clinics to ‘maintain full and continued access to EMIS even when an adverse event may force the system to become temporarily unavailable’.
On X.com GP Dr Nikita Kanani wrote: ‘IT outage tips: – if on EMIS, try BC mode — you can use local non networked apps like Docman to pull critical information — use a simple GP notes proforma to keep records for uploading later — switch off incoming triage systems for now — update patient facing sites.’
US cyber security company CrowdStrike has admitted to being responsible for the error, as they report on their website they are ‘working on it’.
Sky News viewers were left with a static message on their TVs apologising for the ‘disruption’ to the service at 6am when broadcasting was meant to begin.
It read: ‘We apologise for the interuption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.’
Ryanair has also seemingly been hit with the issue after it posted on its website urging passengers to arrive at airports three hours early blaming a ‘third party IT issue, which is outside Ryanair’s control and affect all airlines operating across the network’.
The issue is impacting companies globally with online reports that Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, the US and the UK have all been affected.
Just two months ago Microsoft was hit with another major outage after Bing.com, Microsoft’s search engine, went down with the problem apparently spreading to the brand’s application programming interface which means that services such as DuckDuckGo also went down.
According to reports the outage also impacted ChatGPT and Ecosia. Despite Google’s dominance in the world of web searching, Bing’s API has numerous high profile clients.
In various reports on X, users said that they were either greeted with a blank page or a 429 HTTP code error when they attempted to log on.
Users claimed that both Bing.com and DuckDuckGo were loading but neither were producing search results when a query was typed.
