Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 13 July 2021
64. Deputy Kieran O'Donnell asked the Minister for Health the measures being taken to mitigate the impact of the cyber-attack on UL Hospital Group services; the impact of the attack on the UL Hospital Group; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28658/21]
View answerThe HSE has been working since the 14th of May to recover the effects of the cyber-attack on its systems. The attack had the impact of removing access to most patient and care systems as well as central business systems. It has advised that many of these systems have been recovered and services have recommenced.
In relation to the UL Hospitals Group specifically, I am advised that the Group has implemented a number of workaround solutions to address the catastrophic impacts, including building and setting up a database for issuing medical record numbers and developing processes for both manual paper records and Excel databases. In collaboration with the Office of the HSE Chief Information Officer, software was deployed to negate the impact and older servers were updated within the Group.
Front line clinical systems including diagnostics, radiology, oncology, specialised servers to support clinical devices and the patient administration system were prioritised for restoration. Approximately 2,000 computers and laptops, along with 100 servers were checked and updated with new software. Upon restoration of the clinical systems, the UL Hospitals group began backloading the manual data. There are currently five teams deployed to this process, which is still ongoing.
Emergency and time-critical services continued to operate. However, approximately 10,000 outpatient appointments and scheduled procedures were cancelled in UL Hospitals Group as a result of the cyber-attack. Scheduled care continues to be restored across hospital sites on a phased basis.
