The outage affected services across the system, including patient referrals, ambulance dispatch, after-hours appointment bookings and emergency prescriptions. “I am regularly informed about the incident affecting NHS 111 services across the UK,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay said on Saturday. “NHS England has contingency plans in place in affected areas and service disruption is minimal.” The attack was first detected at 7am on Thursday by Advanced, a company that provides digital services for NHS 111. The company’s chief operating officer told the BBC that the loss of service was related to a cyber attack and had been limited to “a small number servers”. The company said the issue may not be fully resolved until next week, the BBC reported. Those who contacted the health service on Friday were warned of delays as the outage affected all four UK countries. It is understood that the perpetrators are cybercriminals and not state-sponsored. An NHS spokesman said: “NHS 111 services are still available for patients who are unwell, but as always, if it is an emergency call 999. “At present there is minimal disruption and the NHS will continue to monitor the situation as it works with Advanced to resolve its software system as quickly as possible – tried and tested contingency plans are in place for local areas using this service” . Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST The disruption is the latest to hit the NHS as the health service faces its worst staffing crisis in its history. MPs have called for action to tackle critical gaps in almost every area of care as it struggles to keep up with demand. Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said that while plans were in place to mitigate the impact, there would be some level of disruption. “Ministers are constantly updated [the] Cyber incident affecting NHS systems across the UK,” Yousaf said. “We are working closely on a four-nation basis to coordinate our resilience response where appropriate.”
