Healthcare system outage: Services fully restored, investigations ongoing

SINGAPORE – A service disruption that hit Singapore’s public healthcare sector for about 9½ hours on Oct 13 has been resolved.

Affected systems were progressively restored from around 3pm, with services fully restored by 4.37pm, said national healthtech agency Synapxe in a Facebook post at around 5.40pm.

The disruption affected all three of Singapore’s public healthcare clusters – NHG Health, National University Health System (NUHS) and SingHealth.

There is no indication that the service disruption was a cyberincident, and investigations are ongoing, said Synapxe.

At around 7.10am, a technical issue affecting network connectivity resulted in disruptions to some services across the public healthcare clusters, Synapxe said.

These included patient services such as appointment booking through call centres, visitor registration and billing inquiries.

During the disruption, patients and visitors at some public healthcare institutions experienced longer waiting times for certain services, it added.

Synapxe said its teams worked closely with the public healthcare clusters to restore services as quickly as possible.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank patients, visitors and healthcare staff for their patience and understanding,” it said.

In a media reply after services were restored, an NHG Health spokesperson said that while some patient services across its institutions – such as its call centre lines and appointment booking – were affected, patient care was not compromised.

It said its institutions immediately activated established downtime procedures, which allowed clinical services – including emergency care, inpatient care, surgery, medical tests and scans – to continue with minimal disruption.

Medication delivery service also remained available through its pharmacies.

“Additional staff and volunteers stepped forward to support ground operations, assisting patients with registration and payment on site, and easing the impact of the disruption,” it added.

NHG Health was among the first to announce the disruptions on social media. It said in a Facebook post at about 9am that call services in its cluster were “temporarily unavailable”.

Three of its institutions – Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Yishun Community Hospital and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital – said in separate Facebook posts that there may be longer waiting times.

During the disruption, NHG Health had advised patients and members of the public to use its websites, HealthHub or the NHG Health App for assistance.

Woodlands Hospital, which is under NHG Health, said at 1.30pm that its call centre lines had been restored. The cluster also manages 10 polyclinics, among other healthcare institutions.

Another cluster, NUHS, said in a Facebook post at about 11.30am that its institutions were experiencing technical disruptions affecting multiple systems. The National University Hospital (NUH) had said in an Instagram post at about 10.30am that it was experiencing a “system downtime”.

Apart from NUH, the NUHS cluster also includes Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and eight polyclinics.

In its post, NUHS sought the public’s understanding for possible longer waiting times.

In a media reply on Oct 14, an NUHS spokesperson said the cluster activated its business continuity and downtime procedures shortly after becoming aware of the network connectivity issue at around 7.10am on Oct 13.

“Teams across our hospitals, national centres and polyclinics implemented established contingency measures, including manual workflows where necessary, to maintain continuity of patient care and essential services while the issue was being addressed,” said the spokesperson.

Additional measures were also put in place to support patients and visitors and minimise operational disruptions.

The spokesperson said patient safety remained NUHS’ priority throughout the incident, and essential services continued with the support of the established arrangements.

“We thank our patients and visitors for their patience and understanding, and our staff for their professionalism and dedication,” added the spokesperson.

SingHealth’s Singapore General Hospital said in a Facebook post at about 11.30am that it was “experiencing a temporary system disruption affecting some of our services”.

These included outpatient appointment bookings and changes, visitor registration and billing inquiries, it added.

Healthcare institutions under SingHealth include Sengkang General Hospital, Changi General Hospital and polyclinics in places such as Bedok and Eunos.

In a media reply on Oct 14, SingHealth’s deputy group chief executive officer (digital and future health) Kenneth Kwek said the group immediately activated its business continuity plan when it was alerted to the disruption on the morning of Oct 13.

He added: “Clinical services were unaffected and there was no disruption to patient care as our clinical and patient-facing systems continued to function normally. Our healthcare teams continued to provide patient care and clinical service.

“All affected systems were fully restored by Tuesday evening.”

Singapore’s 24-hour mental health helpline and textline, mindline.sg, also reported issues with its hotline and WhatsApp service at 8am. In a noon update, it said services were fully operational.