Wirral NHS Trust forced to rely on pen & paper following a major cyber attack

The Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust said that a significant data security incident has forced hospital staff to rely on pen-and-paper operations to continue healthcare services.

 

Earlier this week, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said that “a major incident has been declared at the Trust for cyber security reasons.”

 

While the details of the incident including the nature and scope of the same are yet to be revealed to the public, a spokesperson for the NHS Trust said that the incident forced the trust to cancel scheduled outpatient appointments.

 

Later, in a separate update, the trust said that all maternity services are running as usual.

 

“All antenatal appointments, community midwife appointments, scans, and post-natal visits are continuing as usual. Please still attend maternity appointments unless contacted otherwise. The 24-hour emergency triage service is running as normal,” read the notice.

 

In an update published on November 27, a Wirral University Teaching Hospital spokesperson said that the trust is working hard to “rectify the issue”.

 

“After detecting suspicious activity, as a precaution, we isolated our systems to ensure that the problem did not spread. This resulted in some IT systems being offline. We have reverted to our business continuity processes and are using paper rather than digital in the areas affected,” they said.

 

The trust added that it is working with the national cyber security centre and is working under its guidance to recover from the incident.

 

“Our staff are working tirelessly to ensure that safe patient care remains our priority. While services continue to be available, there has been disruption to planned services, for example, some scheduled appointments are affected,” it said.

 

“Unfortunately, we have had to postpone some procedures which will be rescheduled. The public are advised to continue to attend any scheduled appointments, along with their appointment letters, unless contacted otherwise.”

 

The trust is yet to share details on the nature of the cyber attack, however, the fact that it had to isolate affected systems indicates that it may have suffered a ransomware attack.