United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) 111 emergency services are affected by a significant and ongoing outage due to a cyberattack that hit the systems of British managed service provider (MSP) Advanced.
Advanced’s Adastra client patient management solution, which is used by 85% of NHS 111 services was hit by a major outage together with several other services provided by the MSP.
People seeking medical help via the NHS 111 call line have been warned of delays which may not be resolved until next week.
This system is used by Local Health Boards to coordinate the services for patients. The ongoing outage has been far-reaching, impacting each of the four nations in the UK.
The UK public is advised to access the NHS 111 emergency services using the online platform until the incident is resolved.
Advanced’s status page is now blocked to the public by a login form and allows access only to customers and employees. The Chief Operating Officer of Advanced, Simon Short confirmed that the incident was caused by a cyberattack detected on Thursday morning and as a precaution, they have immediately isolated all health and care environments.
While no details were provided regarding the nature of the cyberattack, it is likely that this was a ransomware or data extortion attack.
Advanced provides business software to more than 22,000 global customers in various industry verticals, from healthcare and education to non-profits.
The MSP’s list of customers includes the NHS, the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and the London City Airport.
Several other health and care systems delivered by Advanced have also experienced outages.
The full list of affected solutions are:
- Adastra – a clinical patient management software that impacts around 40 million patients
- Caresys – a care home management software that helps over 1,000 care organizations
- Carenotes – an electronic patient record software used by over 40,000 clinicians
- Crosscare – a clinical management system for hospices and private practice used by over 70 adult and children’s hospices across the UK
- Staffplan – a care management software that helps over 1,000 care organizations
Image Credits : BBC
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