Patient death linked to NHS cyberattack
The death of a person has been linked to a major ransomware attack on NHS services last June.
Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images.
The death of a person has been linked to a major ransomware attack on NHS services last June.
One patient had "died unexpectedly" on June 3rd, 2024, when a ransomware attack on NHS services caused massive disruption, according to King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
The attack delayed over 1,100 cancer treatments, disrupted 2,000 outpatient appointments, and postponed more than 1,000 operations.
“One patient sadly died unexpectedly during the cyberattack. As is standard practice when this happens, we undertook a detailed review of their care,” the trust said in a statement.
“The patient safety incident investigation identified a number of contributing factors that led to the patient’s death.
“This included a long wait for a blood test result due to the cyberattack impacting pathology services at the time.
“We have met with the patient’s family, and shared the findings of the safety investigation with them.”
Guy's and St Thomas', King's College, and Lewisham and Greenwich hospitals were all affected. The ransomware attack, understood to be carried out by the Russian group Qilin, targeted Synnovis, a provider of lab services in south-east London, impacting the delivery of a range of pathology services.
Synnovis CEO Mark Dollar released an official statement, stating the attack “affected all Synnovis IT systems, resulting in interruptions to many of our pathology services.”
The NHS Trusts in the area were unable to do work involving transfusions or blood matching without the pathology service, so they had the universal blood type, O-type blood, for everyone. This contributed to a national shortage of O-type blood supplies, Sky News reports.
Dollar commented on the news of the death: "We are deeply saddened to hear that last year's criminal cyberattack has been identified as one of the contributing factors that led to this patient's death.
"Our hearts go out to the family involved."
It was previously reported that nearly 600 “patient incidents” were linked to the June 3rd attack.