Cancer patients have been forced to skip treatments and diabetics have been left without life-saving drugs due to a global outage of Microsoft’s computer system.
GP services across the county have also been affected, with family doctors struggling to make appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions and make referrals.
MailOnline has also learned that chemotherapy services in some parts of the NHS have also been affected.
One patient, receiving treatment for stage 4 cancer at Manchester’s Christie Hospital and speaking on condition of anonymity, said several cancer patients have been unable to complete their weekly appointments.
They told this website: ‘Due to the global computer system outage, no one here is able to receive chemotherapy treatment as all records of patient dosages and types of chemotherapy are only kept in the computer system, with no paper copies.’
Father Grant Ciccone, from Deptford, south-east London, is one of the patients affected by the IT disruption and tells MailOnline he is unable to get any more insulin than he needs to keep his diabetes stable.
Microsoft’s global service outage has affected vital NHS services, with reports that the EMIS medical IT system is down
‘There is a waiting room full of people waiting in the hope that the system will be fixed, but I have decided not to wait, which means I will miss my chemo dose this week.
“I think it’s ridiculous that there is no paper copy of patients’ treatment.”
A spokesperson for Christie NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that they had been affected by the global IT issue.
“This IT outage is expected to impact chemotherapy and immunotherapy services and some internal hospital systems,” they said.
‘Patients who have an appointment should attend as normal unless they have been previously contacted by our team, this includes patients attending for systemic cancer treatments, who should attend as normal unless they have been contacted.
‘Some chemotherapy and immunotherapy appointments have already been rescheduled and we are working with our providers and partners to resolve the issue and have plans in place to mitigate the disruption.
Another patient, this time with diabetes, said he had been unable to get the medication he needed to live.
Father Grant Ciccone, from Deptford, south-east London, told MailOnline he has run out of the insulin injections he needs to keep his type 1 diabetes under control and is unable to get more because of the computer system outage.
“I can’t get the insulin I need to stay alive. I’ve run out of both types of insulin I need,” she said.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to get a prescription as the GP’s website is also down and no one is answering the phone.”
Diabetics who cannot access the insulin they need can suffer from a life-threatening condition called diabetic ketoacidosis.
This is where a lack of insulin, which people without diabetes produce naturally, leads to a harmful buildup of a chemical called ketones in the blood.
Ketones are produced when the body burns fat, and while having some in the body is normal, if levels get too high they can make the blood slightly acidic and damage organs.
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the north west of England that uses the system, said its services had been affected by the disruption.
Another primary care provider, Solihull Healthcare Partnership, said its ability to book appointments would be affected by the EMIS disruption.
Several GP services have also been affected by the disruption to a system called EMIS, which is used by primary care providers to book appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions and make referrals affected by the disruption.
A GP practice manager in Berkshire told this website: “We are completely dead in the water.”
“We can’t see any patients because our systems are down. It’s not clinically safe to treat patients because we can’t see their records.”
Dr Darren Simpson, a GP in Wallsend, Newcastle, added: “We’re a bit stuck. EMIS is the GP’s entire record – all letters, hospital results, everything we document and patient bookings go through it.
‘When we log in, it only displays “Network Error.”
‘If a patient calls with an acute problem, of course we can see them and we will issue handwritten prescriptions.
“We simply cannot see their complete medical records, view their results or verify what medications they are taking.”
MailOnline has contacted EMIS 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 organizations globally and we are working with the relevant parties to restore service as quickly as possible.
‘Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this is causing you. We will continue to keep you informed as this work progresses.’
An NHS England spokesperson confirmed the problem, saying: “The NHS is aware of a global IT system outage and an issue with EMIS, a patient records and appointment system, which is causing disruption to the majority of GP practices.”
‘The NHS has long-standing measures in place to manage disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual telephone systems to communicate with your GP.
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‘There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they normally would.’
They added that patients should continue to attend their appointments unless otherwise instructed.
MailOnline has also contacted NHS England about the impacts on chemotherapy services.
The computer outage, which began last night, caused Windows computers to shut down suddenly, causing departure boards to suddenly go dark at airports, grounding flights and taking television channels, airports and banks offline.
In the UK, Britain’s largest rail operator has warned passengers they could experience delays due to “widespread computer problems”, while airline Ryanair has warned of “potential disruption”.
US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has admitted responsibility for the bug, saying on its website that it is “working on it.”
Sky News viewers were left with a static message on their televisions apologising for the “disruption” of the service at 6am, when the broadcast was due to begin.
The message read: “We apologise for the interruption of this broadcast. We hope to restore Sky News broadcast shortly.”
Ryanair also appears to have been affected by the problem after posting a notice on its website urging passengers to arrive at airports three hours early, blaming a “third party IT issue, which is outside of Ryanair’s control and affects all airlines operating on the network.”
The issue is affecting businesses around the world, with reports online that Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, the US and the UK have been affected.
Just two months ago, Microsoft suffered another major outage after Bing.com, Microsoft’s own search engine, went down and the problem apparently spread to the brand’s application programming interface, meaning services like DuckDuckGo also stopped working.
The outage also reportedly affected ChatGPT and Ecosia. Despite Google’s dominance in the world of web search, Bing’s API has numerous high-profile clients.
In several reports on X, users said they saw a blank page or an HTTP error code 429 when they tried to log in.
Users reported that both Bing.com and DuckDuckGo were loading, but neither produced search results when a query was typed.
Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world, meaning the disruption is affecting almost every sector of the global economy: supermarkets and cafes including Morrisons, Waitrose and bakery chain Gail’s are unable to accept card payments.
In a sign of the global impact of the computer glitch, passengers were seen sleeping in the corridors of Los Angeles International Airport, huge queues formed at terminals across Spain and in Delhi staff set up a board to record departures.