Healthcare system outage: No indication of cyber incident, says national healthtech agency Synapxe

[SINGAPORE] There is no indication that a service disruption that hit Singapore’s public healthcare sector on Oct 13 is a cyber incident, national healthtech agency Synapxe said.

In a Facebook post at about 2.40 pm, it said the public healthcare clusters – NHG Health, National University Health System (NUHS) and SingHealth – are “currently experiencing connectivity issues affecting some services”.

This includes patient-facing systems such as appointment booking through call centres, visitor registration and billing inquiries.

Earlier in the day, visitors and patients were advised to expect longer wait times as healthcare institutions reported ongoing system disruptions.

Singapore’s 24-hour mental health helpline and textline, mindline.sg, also reported issues with its hotline and WhatsApp service at 8 am. In an update at 12 pm, it said services were fully operational.

“We understand the inconvenience this may cause, especially for patients and visitors who are at our healthcare institutions,” said Synapxe.

It also apologised for the disruption and thanked the public for their patience and understanding.

“Please be assured that our technical teams are working urgently to resolve the issue and restore services as soon as possible,” it added.

NHG Health and NUHS issued notices on the disruptions on social media in the morning of Oct 13.

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NHG Health, which was among the first to post about the disruptions, said in a Facebook post at about 9am that call services across its cluster were “temporarily unavailable”.

It added that it was working to restore access, but did not specify the cause of the disruption.

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.

NHG Health said in an update at about 12.20 pm that it had deployed additional staff to assist with patient services on site.

“Call centre lines across NHG Health remain temporarily unavailable, and our institutions are experiencing system disruption affecting some services,” it said.

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

“We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We seek your understanding and patience during this time.”

At about 1.10 pm, NHG Polyclinics – which manages 10 polyclinics, including those in Ang Mo Kio, Hougang and Yishun – advised those who need assistance to reach its staff through the live chat service on the NHG Polyclinics website.

The public can also use the NHG Health App or HealthHub to view, make or change their appointments, it added.

Woodlands Hospital, also under NHG Health, said at 1.30 pm that its call centre lines have been restored.

Separately, the National University Hospital (NUH) said in an Instagram post at about 10.30 am that it was experiencing a “system downtime”.

At about 11.30 am, NUHS said in a Facebook post that its institutions were experiencing technical disruptions affecting multiple systems.

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

In its post, NUHS also sought the public’s understanding for possible longer waiting times and advised patients and the public to check its social media platforms for updates.

“Patient care continues to be our priority,” NUHS said. “We apologise for any inconvenience caused as we work to resolve the matter.”

Both NHG Health and NUHS said they are working with Synapxe to restore access.

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

This includes outpatient appointment bookings and changes, visitor registration and billing enquiries, it added.

“Our teams are working to restore the affected systems as soon as possible and will provide updates when services resume.” THE STRAITS TIMES