NHS patient database goes titsup
The database that stores vital medical information on millions of NHS patients crashed last week.
Outsourcing giant CSC, which won a £973m contract to run part of the Care Records system in 2003 and has picked up more contracts since, was forced to invoke disaster recovery when hospitals and local surgeries were unable to access it last Tuesday.
CSC is responsible for Care Records in the North, Midlands and Eastern regions.
The firm said: "There was a temporary loss of services to a small number of Trusts within our region on 10th February 2009. Service was resumed during the course of the day, there was no loss of patient data and there was no impact to patient care."
Care records databases for other regions are run by BT. Accenture and Fujitsu, which originally won regional contracts, both pulled out, in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
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