Microsoft‘s global outage has hit vital NHS services, with reports that the medical computer system EMIS isn’t working.
The EMIS system is used by GPs to book appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions and make referrals.
However doctors in some areas of the UK are currently reporting ‘100 per cent outage’.
Speaking to MailOnline a GP practice manager in Berkshire said: ‘We are completely dead in the water.
‘We can’t see any patients are systems are down. It’s not clinically safe to treat patients because we can’t see their notes.
The global Microsoft outage has hit vital NHS services, according to reports that medical computer system EMIS is not working
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England which uses the system, said its services had been impacted by the outage
‘Can’t give out prescriptions and even if we do hand write them the problem is also affecting the pharmacies. It’s affecting the whole area and hospitals are in an even worse situation.’
Another GP practice, based in South West London, said they had lost ‘100 per cent’ of their clinical systems and were having to turn away patients and direct some to the NHS 111 service.
Other providers of NHS primary care services reported similar issues up and down the country.
Dr Darren Simpson, a GP in Wallsend, Newcastle told MailOnline: ‘We’re a bit stuck. EMIS is the entire GP record — all letters, hospital results, everything we document and patient bookings are done through it.
‘When we log on, it just says “Network Error”.
‘If a patient calls with an acute problem of course we can still see them and we issue handwritten prescriptions.
‘We just can’t see their full medical records, look at results or check what medication they’re on.’
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England which uses the system, said this morning: ‘Unfortunately there is a national issue with EMIS Web — the clinical computer system used within GP practices.
‘This will affect our ability to book appointments/consult with patients this morning. We apologise for the disruption.
It added: ‘If you have a life-threatening medical emergency, please dial 999.’
MailOnline has contacted EMIS and NHS England for comment.
But an alert issued by the company to GPs this morning, seen by this website, said: ‘We are aware that users are still unable to access EMIS Web’.
‘We are affected by a third-party issue that is impacting organisations globally, and we are working with the relevant parties to restore service as soon as possible.
‘Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this is causing. We will continue to keep you updated as this work progresses.’
The IT fault, which started last night, has caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down, prompting departure boards to suddenly turn off at airports, grounding flights and knocking TV channels, airports and banks offline.
In the UK, Britain’s biggest train country told passengers to expect delays due to ‘widespread IT issues’, while Ryanair warned of ‘potential disruption’.
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool, was another reporting problems, saying it would need to pause some services on safety grounds
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley was another saying it would need to restrict services due to the IT problems
On the social media platform X some GPs are reporting having to ‘go back to paper and pen’, while others are saying they are unaffected.
Ellergreen Medical Centre an NHS GP practice in Liverpool: ‘Currently there is a national outage of the GP record software EMIS. We are not aware of why as yet and are waiting further information.
‘This will impact on how the practice can safely see patients, issue medications etc.
‘We will be pausing some services on safety grounds.’
@GPforhire wrote: ‘Argh! No Emis!! Back to pen and paper. Hope nothing urgent comes in.’
Later the same account added: ‘Blimey, one of the nurses says its nationwide! Yikes.’
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley ‘There is a widespread IT problem effecting England and other Countries.
‘Currently we are unable to use our Clinical Software System EMIS so we will only be able to complete urgent duties till the situation is sorted’.
Solihull Healthcare Partnership: ‘Unfortunately there is a national issue with EMIS Web – our clinical computer system.
‘This will affect our ability to book/consult with patients this morning. We will update patients when we can. We apologise for the disruption.’
Wilmslow Health Centre added: ‘All practices in the UK using the NHS commissioned GP computer system EMIS are currently without access to their IT systems.
‘This is beyond the control of GP surgeries. Please bear with us until we have our IT systems back online.’
Another primary care provider Solihull Healthcare Partnership, said its ability to book appointments would be affected by the EMIS outage
Wilmslow Health Centre urged patients to be patient with GPs today as the fault with the IT system was out of their hands
EMIS offers a backup, offline model — the Business Continuity, or BC mode — which allows clinics to ‘maintain full and continued access to EMIS even when an adverse event may force the system to become temporarily unavailable’.
On X GP Dr Nikita Kanani wrote: ‘IT outage tips: – if on EMIS, try BC mode — you can use local non networked apps like Docman to pull critical information — use a simple GP notes proforma to keep records for uploading later — switch off incoming triage systems for now — update patient facing sites.’
However BC mode only allows basic access to patient information, such as names, addresses and some detail about conditions they may have.
US cyber security company CrowdStrike has admitted to being responsible for the error, as they report on their website they are ‘working on it’.
Sky News viewers were left with a static message on their TVs apologising for the ‘disruption’ to the service at 6am when broadcasting was meant to begin.
It read: ‘We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.’
Ryanair has also seemingly been hit with the issue after it posted on its website urging passengers to arrive at airports three hours early blaming a ‘third party IT issue, which is outside Ryanair’s control and affect all airlines operating across the network’.
The issue is impacting companies globally with online reports that Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, the US and the UK have all been affected.
Just two months ago Microsoft was hit with another major outage after Bing.com, Microsoft’s search engine, went down with the problem apparently spreading to the brand’s application programming interface which means that services such as DuckDuckGo also went down.
According to reports the outage also impacted ChatGPT and Ecosia. Despite Google’s dominance in the world of web searching, Bing’s API has numerous high-profile clients.
In various reports on X, users said that they were either greeted with a blank page or a 429 HTTP code error when they attempted to log on.
Users claimed that both Bing.com and DuckDuckGo were loading but neither were producing search results when a query was typed.
