A global tech outage has affected several hospitals, taking electronic health record systems offline and forcing some to cancel non-emergency services.
The global outage is related to cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which deployed a defect in an update for computers running Microsoft Windows. The CEO of CrowdStrike said in an update the issue has been identified and isolated, and a fix has been deployed.
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The outage affected airlines, banks, media companies and hospitals, many of which are being forced to operate without their EHR systems online.
Electronic health record company Epic said portions of its platform for cloud-based applications and services were impacted. The company said access to its telehealth platform and other services have been restored, but did not share what other applications and services were initially affected. The spokesperson said said some tools were moved to different Microsoft Azure servers, while Microsoft restored others.
An Epic spokesperson said in a statement the CrowdStrike update caused technical issues that prevent healthcare organizations from using its systems. The spokesperson said groups have reported the laptop and desktop workstations staff use to access Epic are down. Others report that issues with data center software are preventing them from using multiple systems including Epic.
The spokesperson said Epic's internal systems were unaffected.
A spokesperson for Oracle declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Boston-based Mass General Brigham said the issue affected many of its systems. The health system has canceled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits for Friday.
Hartford Healthcare has some minimal impacts across its system but has not been forced to deploy any backup plans for its Epic Systems EHR, a spokesperson said.
Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare's hospitals and clinics are open but it is delaying procedures at ambulatory surgery centers and hospitals until systems are stabilized, a spokesperson said. The health system is encouraging patients to continue to use the Epic MyChart patient portal to manage appointments.
A spokesperson for Cleveland Clinic said some of the health system's technology was impacted by the global IT outage, but patient care is not affected.
Renton, Washington-based Providence said it has been affected by the CrowdStrike outage and some clinical applications are still down. Its Epic EHR system has been restored, a spokesperson said.
The outage affected fewer than 10% of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Microsoft Windows-based devices at some facilities, according to a spokesperson. The system is restoring servers and, patient care hasn't been affected, the spokesperson said.
St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare said it was experiencing technical issues related to the outage.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
