Maternity hospitals turn to speedy porters as cyber hack downs their technology

It took the Cork University Maternity Hospital less than eight hours after cyberattack to find way around the problems.

Of the country's 19 maternity hospitals, four run only on electronic records so the cyberattack has forced them back to paper charts rushed by porters around the wards.

In Cork University Maternity Hospital it took them less than eight hours after the attack to figure out a way to get around the problems, with the first theatre opened at 11am on that day.

“We have great porters. They are doing probably 25,000 steps a day back and forth to the laboratories,” clinical director Professor John Higgins said.

“That is how everything is being done, on foot and by paper. You are back in the 80s.” 

The hospital was the pilot site for the online Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System which now runs there and in Kerry University Hospital, the Rotunda and the National Maternity Hospital (NMH).

Gynaecology clinics and some gynaecology surgery are unfortunately cancelled, Prof Higgins said, but added: "In terms of surgery, (patients) should assume it is going ahead until we ring them, we will tell them.” 

Women are being asked to bring any medical documents they might have to appointments, helping staff add to the paper charts they are creating.

Prof Higgins said of the last week: “It was a great effort by staff. To have to do that at the end of the last 18 months was huge. They are a credit to themselves and a credit to Ireland.” 

CUMH had gathered names for a mass-texting programme to start vaccinations. Now those numbers are being used to phone hundreds of women individually.

Visiting for partners of pregnant women is also affected, as CUMH was organising this through a VisitorApp. Now that is done by phone or word of mouth, he said.

Staff cannot access any online systems, and he said: " We are working on the basis this could last for some weeks."

At the NMH, staff created about 3,000 paper charts last week.

Master at the hospital Prof Shane Higgins said these were for gynaecology and antenatal clinics, as well as for 150 births.

The NMH has its own firewall, and a check by an outside security company of 700 of the 900 teminals on site has so far not found any breaches.

But while internal systems are working which lessens the stress, they cannot access the HSE patient data.

The hospital had some charts stored against this eventuality. “We borrowed charts from the Coombe. And my thanks to the master of the Coombe who put some charts in a box and sent them over to us," Prof Higgins said. “That’s the kind of workaround we are looking at.” 

Their vaccination programme had already started but had to change from a mass-emailing system to individual phone calls.

Staff now collect patient data from the women as they attend clinics, passing that to the vaccine team who then phone to arrange appointments.

He praised the staff saying no clinics or theatre work were cancelled across the hospital.

“When you face a challenge like this at no notice, people just step up,” he said. “We were anticipating delays, but the clinics ran as smoothly as they always do.” 

Prof Higgins is hopeful developments around the decryption key will speed up the return to normal. For now, he said: “I think we were told to prepare for 4 to 6 weeks.”