Daily Blood Sampling in London Hospitals Down from 10,000 to 400 After Synnovis Ransomware Attack
13 June 2024 at 11:31
βUrgent requests are severely restricted at around 400 a day. Historically primary care and community services have generated around 10,000 samples a day for testing, which gives you an idea of the scale of the impact.β - SynnovisServices including blood transfusions reportedly remain severely disrupted at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital and King's College Hospital. Both hospitals are experiencing disruption of pathology services, particularly blood tests.
Blood Testing Severely Impacted After Synnovis Ransomware Attack
The biggest challenge that Synnovis is currently facing is that all its automated end-to-end laboratory processes are offline since all IT systems have been locked down in response to the ransomware attack. βThis means we are having to log all samples manually when they arrive, select each test manually on analyzers and, once tests have been processed, type in each result on the laboratoryβs computer system (the Laboratory Information Management System - LIMS),β Synnovis said. And this is not the end of it. Synnovis then must manually deliver these results to the Trustβs IT system so that the results can be further electronically submitted back to the requester. But since the Synnovisβ LIMS is presently disconnected from the Trustsβ IT systems, βthis extensive manual activity takes so much time that it severely limits the number of pathology tests we can process at the moment,β Synnovis explained. The pathology service provider normally processes around 10,000 primary care blood samples a day, but at the moment is managing only up to 400 from across all six boroughs. βDespite the measures we know colleagues are taking to prioritize the most urgent samples, we are receiving many more than we can process and we have an increasing backlog,β Synnovis said. The lab services provider last week was able to process around 3,000 Full Blood Count samples but could not export results due to the lack of IT connectivity. βOf those tests processed, we have phoned through all results that sit outside of critical limits, however, we have been unable to return any results electronically and are unlikely to be able to do so,β Synnovis said. The impact of the Synnovis ransomware attack is also felt on NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), as it appealed to the public earlier this week to urgently donate O blood-type (+ve and -ve) across England. The attack caused significant disruption on the hospitalsβ ability to match patientsβ blood types, leading to an increased demand for O-positive and O-negative blood donations that are medically considered safe for all patients.Will Process only 'Clinically Critical' Blood Samples
To manage the inadequacy of the services, the service provider is momentarily only accepting blood samples that the requesting clinician considers to be βclinically critical.β Clinicians need to consider a test as βcriticalβ only if a test result is needed within 24 hours to determine a patientβs urgent treatment or care plan. βAs experts, your clinical view of what is considered βcriticalβ will be accepted by the laboratory, but we urge you to apply this definition carefully, given the severe capacity limitations we are facing,β Synnovis recommended. [caption id="attachment_77097" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]![Synnovis ransomware attack](../themes/icons/grey.gif)