A global disruption affecting Microsoft services has caused significant problems for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), delaying patient referrals and affecting communication between healthcare providers. Rachel Harrison, public services head at the GMB union, said on Friday that NHS staff responsible for receiving emergency calls were unable to transfer patient information through their usual channels.
She warned that the disruption was creating a major backlog and could lead to serious difficulties for health services. However, she noted that emergency and life-threatening call-outs appeared to be unaffected. Microsoft ruled out malicious activity as the cause of the outage, which left millions of users worldwide unable to access, or experiencing limited access to, services including Outlook and Teams.
Several NHS organizations also shared messages on social media reporting difficulties with Microsoft products. The disruption has also affected independent pharmacies across the UK. The National Pharmacy Association told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the outage was interfering with communication between pharmacies and doctors’ offices, resulting in delays in handling patients’ prescriptions.
A global Microsoft service disruption has affected Britain’s healthcare system, making it difficult for NHS staff to refer patients and communicate normally. Independent pharmacies have also reported delays in handling prescriptions, although life-threatening emergency call-outs appear unaffected.
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