“Good progress is being made with the restoration of HSE and hospital IT.”
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said “good progress” is being made on the restoration of HSE and hospital IT systems, but that healthcare disruptions will continue into next week.
On Friday, 14 May, the HSE announced it had temporarily shut down its IT system after it was targeted in a “significant ransomware attack”.
The hack has been described as possibly the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state and has caused major disruptions to health services across the country.
In a Twitter thread on Saturday evening, the Minister updated the public regarding the Government’s efforts to get healthcare systems back up and running.
He wrote: “We are making progress on restoring health systems which is important to our patients who need the services and also to the staff across the service who are doing ferocious work after 14 months of intense work on Covid-19.
“The Ministerial Cyber Attack Taskforce continues to meet on a daily basis to review progress with the response to last week’s cyber-attack on the HSE and to coordinate ongoing actions across Government.
“Good progress is being made with the restoration of HSE and hospital IT.”
On Thursday, the hackers responsible for the HSE cyber-attack provided a decryption tool to Irish authorities to allow them to repair their IT systems faster than expected.
Addressing this, Donnelly wrote: “The HSE and IT experts have developed and tested a new version of the decryption tool, and a structured and controlled deployment is now underway across the core network and devices across the system.”
The Health Minister also stated that the National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS) platform that delivers digital radiology is now live again in Beaumont Hospital, with progress being made in other hospitals.
However, Donnelly added: “Levels of disruption next week are expected to be similar to those this week.”
For a detailed county by county breakdown on the availability of health services, visit the HSE’s website.
We are making progress on restoring health systems which is important to our patients who need the services, and also to the staff across the service who are doing ferocious work after 14 months of intense work on COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/ahKqbs5j5y
— Stephen Donnelly (@DonnellyStephen) May 22, 2021
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