By Philip Bradfield

Copyright newsletter

Patients have also been asked to avoid the Emergency Departments unless absolutely necessary. Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and Craigavon Area Hospital are among the trust facilities affected. Asked if the disruption might be due to a cyberattack, the trust told the News Letter “there are no indications that this incident is in any way cyber related”. However the trust has so far declined to tell the News Letter what it believes the cause of the problem is. In a statement this afternoon, the trust gave the latest update on what it described as the “IT Systems Outage”. “The Trust is continuing to experience significant issues with our IT systems which are having an impact on our services,” it said. “Work by engineers to resolve these complex issues is ongoing but disruption to services is likely to continue for some time.” Community services are expected to operate as normal tomorrow, Thursday. “Unfortunately, the majority of planned surgery and out-patient hospital appointments are being cancelled tomorrow (Thursday). These will be rescheduled as soon as possible. “We ask that people avoid coming to our Emergency Departments unless absolutely necessary.” The trust apologised for the disruption and said staff are working hard to resume services as soon as possible. It said visiting patients was still possible. Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart said the trust told her it was believed to be “a software issue and not a cyber-attack”. While on Thursday planned and elective surgeries are likely to be cancelled, she said, patients will be contacted to rearrange new appointments. A&E is open, she said, but only for life threatening conditions and emergencies. The MP also advised patients to keep an eye on the trust Facebook site for official updates. Former NATO intelligence colonel turned cybersecurity expert Philip Ingram said his immediate thought on hearing the news was that it could be linked to a cyber attack in recent years against the health service in the Republic of Ireland. “Because the hacker groups that are behind that are still active,” he told the News Letter. Such hacking groups encrypt health care databases and blackmail health trusts in order to unlock them again. Or they may download patient databases and sell the details to other hackers – or blackmail individual patients about their health records, he says. However, he also affirmed that there may well be a much more innocent explanation for the disruption. “There is a pattern of non malicious or accidental issues in the NHS – the systems are creaking – it could just be an IT update disrupting access to databases. “We have to wait for the Southern Trust to let us know but even if they suspect an attack they have a statutory duty to inform the relevant agencies including the Information Commissioner’s Office.” He said hacking groups tend to be multinational, with individual hackers tending to be based in Russia, China, Iran or N Korea. However the hackers responsible for recent disruption to Jaguar Land Rover and Marks and Spencers were all western / UK-based, he added. TUV Cusher councillor Keith Ratcliffe said he had been folloing the developments “with growing concern”. He said: “The situation is both distressing and unacceptable. Those who rely on scheduled treatments, outpatient services, or community care deserve certainty and reliability — not chaos.” SDLP health spokesman Colin McGrath made similar requests. “While the details of what has happened will cause understandable concern, it is essential that the trust work to reassure the public,” said the South Down MLA. Both of them called on the trust to contact patients and as soon as possible to arrange new appointments. They also called for the trust to explain promptly exactly what went wrong and what steps are being taken to ensure no repeats.