The global Microsoft service outage has affected vital NHS services, with reports that the EMIS medical IT system is down.
The EMIS system allows GPs to book appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions and make referrals.
Speaking to MailOnline, a manager at a GP practice in Berkshire said: “We’re completely dead.”
“We can’t see any patients because the systems are not working. It’s not clinically safe to treat patients because we can’t see their records.
“We cannot give out prescriptions and even if we write them by hand, the problem also affects pharmacies. It affects the whole area and hospitals are in an even worse situation.”
Microsoft’s global service outage has affected vital NHS services, with reports that the EMIS medical IT system is down
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.
Other NHS primary care providers reported similar problems across the country.
GTD Healthcare, a major UK healthcare provider in the North West of England that uses the system, said this morning: ‘Unfortunately, there is a national problem with EMIS Web, the clinical IT system used in GP practices.
‘This will impact our ability to book appointments and conduct consultations with patients this morning. We apologise for the disruption.
He added: “If you have a life-threatening medical emergency, call 999.”
MailOnline has contacted EMIS and NHS England for comment.
The computer outage, which began last night, has caused Windows computers to shut down suddenly, causing airport departure boards to suddenly go dark, grounding flights and knocking out television channels, airports and banks.
In the UK, Britain’s largest rail airport warned passengers they could experience delays due to “widespread computer problems”, while Ryanair warned of “possible disruption”.
On social media platform X, some GPs report having to “go back to pen and paper”, while others say it doesn’t affect them.
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool: ‘There is currently a nationwide outage of the EMIS medical records software. We do not yet know why and are awaiting further information.
‘This will impact how the practice can safely care for patients and administer medications, etc.
‘We will suspend some services for security reasons.’
@GPforhire wrote: ‘Argh! No Emis! Back to pen and paper. Hope nothing urgent comes in.’
Ellergreen Medical Centre, an NHS GP practice in Liverpool, was another to report problems and said it would need to pause some services for safety reasons.
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley was another that said it would need to restrict services because of IT problems.
The same account later added: “Wow! One of the nurses says it’s a nationwide thing! How horrible!”
Cottage Lane Surgery in Gamesley ‘There is a widespread computer problem affecting England and other countries.
‘We are currently unable to use our EMIS clinical software system, so we will only be able to carry out urgent tasks until the situation is resolved.’
Solihull Healthcare Partnership: ‘Unfortunately, there is a national issue with EMIS Web, our clinical IT system.
“This will impact our ability to book/consult with patients this morning. We will inform patients when we are able. We apologise for the disruption.”
Wilmslow Health Centre added: ‘All practices in the UK using the NHS-commissioned EMIS computer system currently do not have access to their IT systems.
“This is beyond the control of medical practices. Please be patient until our computer systems are back up and running.”
EMIS offers a backup business continuity mode, or BC, that allows clinics to “maintain full, continuous access to EMIS even when an adverse event may force the system to become temporarily unavailable.”
On GP X, Dr Nikita Kanani wrote: ‘Tips for IT outages: – if on EMIS, try BC mode; you can use local non-networked apps like Docman to extract critical information; use a simple GP notes form to keep records for upload later; turn off incoming triage systems for now; update patient-facing sites.’
Another primary care provider, Solihull Healthcare Partnership, said its ability to book appointments would be affected by the EMIS disruption.
Wilmslow Health Centre today urged patients to be patient with GPs as the computer system failure was not in their hands.
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.
