Massive Software Outage Paralyzes Hospital EMRs, 911, and Systems Globally
In a major global disruption, a widespread IT outage on July 19, 2024, crippled critical systems worldwide. Hospitals relying on electronic medical record (EMR) systems like EPIC were severely affected, forcing them to revert to paper charting. The outage also impacted airline operations and shut down banking and financial systems. The incident has been linked to a worldwide CrowdStrike update.
Hospitals Hit Hard as EMR Systems Went Dark
Among the hardest hit were hospitals and healthcare facilities that rely on electronic medical record (EMR) systems like Epic to manage patient data, medical histories, and clinical workflows. With the software powering these systems going offline, hospitals were left struggling to maintain operations and provide care.
The outage forced many hospitals to postpone non-emergency procedures and divert ambulances to other facilities as they grappled with the disruption. Concerns grew about potential medication errors, delayed treatments, and compromised patient care as staff worked through unfamiliar manual processes.
What Caused The Software Disruption?
The source of the worldwide IT outage has been attributed to Microsoft and linked to a software update by CrowdStrike.
According to CrowdStrike CEO, George Kurtz on X, the company is working to restore services. A Wikipedia update states, "On July 19, 2024, a faulty CrowdStrike software update caused blue screens of death on Microsoft Windows machines, disrupting millions of Windows computers worldwide. Affected machines were forced into a bootloop, making them unusable. The downtime caused a widespread global impact, grounding commercial airline flights, temporarily taking Sky News offline, and even impacting 911 emergency call centers."
Nurses Report Global Disruptions in EMR Systems
Nurse.org's Instagram account received thousands of comments from nurses across the U.S. reporting that their systems went down overnight and some are still down. According to the comments, outages were experienced in nearly every State and nurses reverted to paper charting, in some cases, ambulances were diverted.
The outage reignited concerns about the concentration of critical infrastructure on a small number of cloud platforms, with major players like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud hosting a significant portion of the world's digital services and data.
