This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Faulty computer system to blame for Leeds IT failure
An independent review has revealed that a combination of ‘hardware/technical failure and human error’ was a fault for the IT failure at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust from September last year.
As a result of the IT failure, a number of services were disrupted for up to two months, leaving Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and other general practices across Bradford and Leeds under extreme pressure.
As a result of not being able to send electronic results of patients’ tests, it was revealed that nearly 150 procedures were postponed, hitting cancer patients the hardest. GP patients faced delays in results, with some required to repeat blood tests.
The review highlighted two main reasons for the IT pathology failure - ‘the highly unusual occurrence of three individual disk failures’ and an ‘incomplete data back-up’ system. According to the review, some data in the system had not been backed up since 2010, highlighting that significant investment is needed to bring ‘end of life’ systems up to modern day standards.
Dr Yvette Oade, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust chief medical officer, has reassured that the trust has taken a number of measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again, including staff training and improved back-up processes.
She said: “Already we have put in place a robust monitoring system to ensure that all system warning indicators across the Trust are identified and acted upon immediately and we have improved the back-up processes within the telepath IT system.
“We have also introduced a test environment to enable us to regularly check the resilience of our systems without affecting the delivery of clinical services and strengthened our risk assessment programme.”
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