No assurance IT problems which hit patients will not reoccur, MLAs told

A health official has told MLAs he cannot give assurances that IT problems which affected patients across the Southern Health Trust area will not be repeated.

Dr Paul Rice, chief digital information officer at the Department of Health, said it was the “nature of modern life” that while technology is central, it will sometimes fail.

Significant IT issues forced ambulance diversions and appointment cancellations at hospitals in the Southern Trust area last week.

Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and Craigavon Area Hospital were among the trust facilities affected.

Appearing before the Stormont Health Committee, trust chief executive Steve Spoerry said he was on holiday in Spain when the IT systems failed.

He told MLAs: “Last Wednesday morning the trust experienced a full outage of its electronic patient record system.

“That caused serious disruption to services throughout that day.”

“The great majority of our colleagues experienced disruption to their working lives because they couldn’t use systems.

“I am afraid to say something just over 1,600 patients missed appointments of one kind or another because we stood down clinical activity.

“People attending the emergency departments waited longer than they would otherwise have done.”

He said the full electronic system was restored on Thursday.

Mr Spoerry added: “There is an investigation into what caused the technical problem in the first place and after we have ascertained the cause, what do we need to do to prevent a re-occurrence.

“There is the process of rebooking those patients who missed their appointments and making sure they are seen again as quickly as possible.

“Then there will be a process of looking at how our business continuity processes worked.”

MLAs were told the total cost of the breakdown had not been worked out.

Mr Spoerry said: “It will cost a bit of money to be honest.

“When we know the cause of the problem we will look to see what sort of contractual recourse we’ve got if that is appropriate.”

Committee chairman Philip McGuigan asked for reassurances over the resilience of IT systems across all health trusts in Northern Ireland.

He said: “These are things we can’t afford in an already creaking health service.”

Dr Rice said: “I think it is important for me to be clear and candid with the committee that the reality is that incidents will continue to occur.

“It is a question of the way in which we manage to reduce the likelihood of those incidents.

“These are complex inter-relationships between people, processes and technology.

“They often, as in this case, involve representatives of the trust working in conjunction with representatives of commercial third parties.

“I think it would be unhelpful for me to give the committee an unqualified assurance that an incident of this nature will never happen again.”

He said the investigation into the IT failure would give “learning points” which could be used in all trusts.

He added: “It is the nature of modern life that technology is central and there will be occasionally incidents where it lets us down.”