Hospital patient data system fails for seven hours

Mater Dei Hospital’s clinical patient administration system, the health service’s IT backbone, was down for about seven hours on Wednesday, forcing staff to carry out most of their administrative work manually. Hospital CEO Ivan Falzon confirmed the system, used for patient admissions, bed management and outpatients, had failed at about 6am after the software had been updated during the night. As a result, staff had to resort to writing information, which would have to be inputted into the system once all the issues were resolved, Mr Falzon said. “This was not ideal, of course, but we have fall-back positions, and all staff are trained in the eventuality of such a failure.” Hospital sources complained the system failure disrupted the day-to-day operation due to restrictions on doing certain jobs, such as blood test orders. One source complained that files could not be transferred and thus, appointments could not be booked. Mr Falzon said the system was used throughout the hospital, with some departments relying on it more than others. This was the case for the accident and emergency department, where it is used when admitting patients. He stressed, however, that the failure in...