London hospitals declare emergency following ransomware attack
A ransomware attack that crippled a London-based medical testing and diagnostics provider has led several major hospitals in the city to declare a critical incident emergency and cancel non-emergency surgeries and pathology appointments, it was widely reported Tuesday.
The attack was detected Monday against Synnovis, a supplier of blood tests, swabs, bowel tests, and other hospital services in six London boroughs. The company said it has "affected all Synnovis IT systems, resulting in interruptions to many of our pathology services." The company gave no estimate of when its systems would be restored and provided no details about the attack or who was behind it.
The outage has led hospitals, including Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospital Trusts, to cancel operations and procedures involving blood transfusions. The cancellations include transplant surgeries, which require blood transfusions. "I can confirm that our pathology partner Synnovis experienced a major IT incident earlier today, which is ongoing and means that we are not currently connected to the Synnovis IT servers," Ian Abbs, CEO of the hospital network Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, wrote in an email posted to social media. "This is having a major impact on the delivery of our services, with blood transfusions being particularly affected. Some activity has already been canceled or redirected to other providers at short notice as we prioritize the clinical work that we are able to safely carry out."
