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Message from Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer and David Carruthers, Medical Director: Update on IT issues

July 1, 2019

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for your patience and perseverance to maintain patient care whilst we have been experiencing ongoing issues with our IT system today. Following the outage this weekend, our IT teams have been working hard and have restored functionality to 5 out of the 11 affected systems so far.

Systems returned to full functionality:

  • Winscribe is now back online and working normally.
  • ESR is now back online and working normally.
  • The bleep system is now fully tested and back online. Radios which were issued earlier today should be returned to the Security team on each site immediately.
  • Bloodtrack is back online and full functioning.
  • PatientFirst back online and fully functioning.

Systems with remaining issues:

  • Alfresco is currently unavailable. This means that archived notes cannot be viewed including consent documentation. It is vital that all clinicians ensure that they re-consent their patients on the day of the procedure, checking letters on CDA/Winscribe, rather than relying on prior consent. Colleagues are advised to plan to continue business continuity plans tomorrow as we work towards a resolution with partners.
  • Issues with the PACS system means that there may be a delay in some radiology reports.
  • The McKesson system used in the cath lab is not currently working and the supplier is currently making progress to resolve the problem. Cath lab procedures can take place normally and business continuity arrangements are set up.
  • Optos that is used in some eye clinics is not available.
  • Remote Access is still unavailable and a plan is currently being put in place to resolve.

It is anticipated most of these will be restored over the next day. We have a new solution for remote access which we will roll out this week.  The implementation plan will be communicated tomorrow.

Please make sure that you continue to report IT issues to the Helpdesk on ext.4050 or via the IT Service Desk portal on Connect. We need to continue reporting all issues so that we have a true picture of functionality across the Trust and so that the team can take action to resolve the problems. Colleagues are advised to actively log in to their systems and test functionality, ensuring that issues are logged and reported to the service desk.

Thanks for your patience.

Best wishes

Rachel Barlow, Chief Operating Officer

David Carruthers, Medical Director