July 19, 2024 – In the early hours of Friday morning, Sue Bennett missed a call from Emory Health in Atlanta and was woke up by a voicemail saying her scheduled biopsy would need to be postponed for 3 weeks. The cause? An enormous IT outage that threatened hospital systems nationwide.
“They were very efficient and got back to me shortly after I called back,” said Bennett. “I was able to reschedule within a few hours.”
Bennett is amongst those affected by the worldwide IT outage that paralyzed not only major hospital systems but additionally banks, air traffic and more.
A software bug from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused Microsoft Windows services to shut down. As a result, hospitals were unable to access critical medical information for every day operations and were forced to cancel non-urgent medical procedures and scheduled appointments.
There isn't any information on when the systems will return to normal. The issue only affects Microsoft services. Mac and Linux systems proceed to operate normally.
Many hospital systems were hit by the virus that originated from allegedly as a routine software update. These include Mount Sinai and Northwell Health in New York, the Provincial Health Services Authority in Vancouver, British Columbia, and England's National Health Service (NHS), amongst many others.
“UofL Health is working through issues caused by the CrowdStrike national IT outage. All patient care continues, including access to emergency care, trauma and surgery,” said a spokesperson for the University of Louisville Hospital in Kentucky. “Appointments with all UofL Physicians locations, medical centers and hospital clinics remain on schedule.”
The NHS said in a opinion that despite the technical chaos, they've “long since taken measures to deal with the disruption, including the use of paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, as well as the usual telephone systems to manage your [general practitioner].”
However, not all systems were in a position to meet their deadlines on time.
According to George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, software updates are “traditionally released in stages… as they were released, we noticed some issues and then pulled them,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
On X, formerly Twitter, Kurtz said: “We understand the seriousness of the situation and deeply regret the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all affected customers to ensure systems are back up and running so they can provide the services their customers count on.”
Johns Hopkins said the outage had “minimal impact” on normal IT operations, the Baltimore-based medical center told WebMD in a press release. “Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) facilities are open and serving patients… JHM has emergency preparedness protocols in place, including outage procedures, that ensure that in the event of such an outage, the health system can maintain continuity of our operations and continue to provide safe, high-quality care.”