Lisa O’Brien reports:
The NHS trust which runs hospitals in Sandwell and Birmingham experienced a ‘significant IT data loss incident’ which ‘impacted upon staff and patient care’, a health chief has revealed.
It is understood the incident happened last month and is said to have ‘disrupted’ over 20 systems across Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Birmingham’s City Hospital, Rowley Regis Hospital and Sandwell General Hospital.
Richard Beeken, the trust’s chief executive, says some eye patients were affected, with some operations and procedures being postponed ‘on assessment of clinical risk’.
If readers are thinking “Aha, another cyberattack,” well, no. According to the news coverage:
“While an independent external review of the cause and recovery of the systems impacted is underway the incident was caused by a recommended update and security patch to an operating system issued by an international software provider who subsequently advised to uninstall the patch through reported known issues.
“On attempting to remove the patch there was system and data loss.
Read more at Express & Star.