England Hospitals Cyber Attack

Several London hospitals said Tuesday that they had to cancel operations and send patients away because of a cyberattack on a company that supplies pathology laboratory services. The firm, Synnovis, said it had been hit with a ransomware attack. Chief Executive Mark Dollar said the attack has affected all Synnovis IT systems, resulting in interruptions to many of our pathology services. It is still early and we are trying to understand exactly what has happened, he said. The National Health Service said there had been a significant impact at King's College and Guy's and St Thomas' hospital trusts, which between them run several south London hospitals, as well as to clinics and doctors' practices across a swath of the city. A memo to staff said the critical incident had had a major impact on the delivery of services, with blood transfusions particularly affected. NHS England London region said in a statement that it was working urgently to fully understand the impact of the inciden

A number of hospitals across England were forced to divert emergency patients after being hit by a suspected cyber-attack.According to a report by The Guardian, hospitals across the country appear to have been simultaneously hit by a bug in their IT systems, leading to many diverting emergency patients.NHS England said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon.East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust, one of the those affected, said in a statement: "Today (Friday, 12 May 2017), the trust has experienced a major IT problem, believed to be caused by a cyber attack. Immediately on discovery of the problem, the trust acted to protect its IT systems by shutting them down; it also meant that the trust's telephone system is not able to accept incoming calls.""The trust is postponing all non-urgent activity for today and is asking people not to come to A&E - please ring NHS111 for urgent medical advice or 999 if it is a life-threatening emergency," the statement ...