The system that allows call operators to dispatch ambulances, book emergency appointments for out-of-hours patients or fill emergency prescriptions has broken down. The company behind the system, Advanced, confirmed on Friday night that it had lost service on some of its systems as a result of a cyber attack. The outage had left staff “working on paperwork” and was “adversely affecting” response times, according to a letter sent to GPs in London on Thursday. The Welsh Ambulance Service said it was a “major outage” which had affected the four nations. A business continuity incident has been declared. The service told patients it may take longer to answer calls over the weekend.
“There is no ETA”
Advanced’s Adstra software is used by 85 per cent of NHS 111 services and affects 40 million patients, according to its website. The letter sent to GPs on Thursday, seen by Pulse, an online magazine for GPs, said call operators cannot book patients directly into GP appointments and asked them to “handle calls where they are possible’ and not refer patients to the service. “A solution is urgently being worked on by Adastra, however, there is no ETA for this,” the letter said. An NHS spokesman said patients are still encouraged to call 111 and will be able to speak to staff. Staff are trying to find solutions to the issue, it is understood, including using internal NHS emails. Advanced posted an update on its status page that the outage has been designated a “priority 1 incident” and has deployed a “highly experienced” team, according to reports. All services have been taken offline pending investigations, according to the message. Other services managed by Advanced have also been affected, including Carenotes, an electronic patient record system used by more than 40,000 clinicians. A source told tech news website The Register that the systems would not be back online “until Tuesday at the earliest”.
“Data protection is of the utmost importance”
Simon Short, chief operating officer of Advanced, said: “A security issue was identified yesterday which resulted in a loss of service to infrastructure hosting products used by our health and care customers. “We can confirm that the incident is related to a cyber attack and as a precaution we have immediately isolated all of our health and care environments. This happened at about 7am. on August 4, 2022. We can also confirm that this action contained the attack and no other issues have been identified. “Timely intervention by the incident response team contained this issue to a small number of servers representing 2% of the health and care infrastructure. The protection of services and data is paramount in the actions we have and undertake. “We are continuing to work with the NHS and health and care agencies, as well as our technology and security partners who are focused on restoring all systems over the weekend and early next week. In the meantime, these affected NHS services will continue to operate [using contingency].” 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” .
