Medway Hospital doesn’t cope well with cyber attack

Plus a shambolic meeting about Hoo, Rehman reflects, and another perfectly normal Conservative

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Medway Hospital doesn’t cope well with cyber attack

A little over a week ago, NHS services across the country were impacted by a significant cyber attack. The system hit by the attack - Adastra - manages how patients are referred to care. It is used by the 111 system to direct patients, book out-of-hours appointments, dispatch ambulances and arrange prescriptions.

Since last Thursday, Adastra has been unavailable as a result of an attack on their system, that may or may not have led to patient records being accessed.

Given the newsletter you are currently reading this in, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that Medway Hospital is one of the many hospitals across the country using the Adastra system.

Getting reliable information on what this breach means for patients seems to pretty hard to find, so I’ve been talking to sources within Medway healthcare to get a clearer sense of what has been going on.

And it really isn’t good.