The Mater hospital in Dublin, Ireland, warned of the risk of devastating technical failures in their computer systems following an IT glitch that caused significant disruptions during the third quarter of this year.

A failure in the hospital’s patient record system led to the cancellation of surgeries and an advisory against attending the emergency department.

The post-incident report revealed that the hospital's PatientCare records system is outdated and lacks technical support for critical components.

The report indicated that patient services were compromised during the entire outage, with an unspecified level of harm to patients.

However, the report did not provide any assurance regarding the system not failing at any point in the future.

During the IT outage in July, medical staff had to revert to using paper files due to the inaccessibility of electronic records.

Sixty procedures, including thirty-two surgeries, were postponed, some of which were urgent.

The report also highlighted that the Health Service Executive denied support for outsourcing surgical activities to the private sector.

Furthermore, 420 general practitioner referrals were logged during the system downtime, suggesting delays in patient care.

The report mentioned that while additional staff were deployed to manage the situation, this approach would not be sustainable in the event of a more severe IT failure.

The report indicated that protracted downtime could require alterations to shift patterns, the contracting of external services, authorisation of additional working hours, and a scaling back of operations.

The threat of an IT malfunction looms large, with the analysis cautioning that a prolonged issue has the potential to slash service provision by as much as a half.

Should a technical malfunction lead to the collapse of the PatientCentre system, it would impact the entire spectrum of hospital services, encompassing the seventeen national services delivered by Mater Hospital.

Repeated requests for a new patient record system were made in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The recent glitch, which lasted less than five days, offered a glimpse into the chaos such failures could cause.

The report suggested that waiting for a regional solution to cover more hospitals could take between four to seven years.

In the interim, the hospital acknowledges the need to manage risks for 18 to 24 months if approval for their own system is granted.