SUDBURY—A “zero-day” virus infiltrated Health Sciences North’s (HSN) computer systems from another hospital in the Northern region, according to HSN. The virus impacted 24 hospitals including both sites of the Manitoulin Health Centre, but although the infection led to the shutdown of the main medical records system and considerable inconvenience for staff and patients, particularly those undergoing cancer treatment, no patient or staff private information was compromised.
“We were advised 8 am on Wednesday that HSN had issues,” noted CEO Lynn Foster when contacted on Friday. “But what is especially important to note is that patient data wasn’t at risk or affected. Our staff personal information was also not impacted, that information is held on a different system.”
“HSN has been in contact with us at a technical and administrative level as well,” noted MHC CFO Tim Vine, who noted that the MHC computers had not been compromised by the virus.
A “zero-day” virus is one that is not captured by the current antivirus software available. As a safety measure, HSN put all of its systems on downtime to ensure the virus was not able to spread to other systems.
Of the 24 hospitals utilizing the HSN systems, 21 hospitals had their main electronic medical records on downtime; 12 had their cancer program systems on downtime; 10 had their medical imaging systems on downtime and four had their email and office software out of commission. All 24 hospitals rely on information systems at HSN during their daily operations, however, precautions quickly put in place enabled HSN to ensure that other hospitals were not infected by the virus.
Still, in the meantime, staff at both MHC sites were taken back to working with pen and paper as they were unable to access the electronic records.
“We are fortunate to have really good staff,” said Ms. Foster, “and we are very appreciative of the wonderful people in the community for their patience and understanding as we work through the issues. We especially have a big thank you to our staff and IT department.”
“Operations have been a little slower than usual,” noted Mr. Vine.
Unfortunately, the downing of the computer systems led to postponement of some chemotherapy treatment in Mindemoya. “That is where there has been the biggest impact,” noted Mr. Vine. It was the cancer program system at HSN where the virus was detected.
For most of the operations at the MHC sites it has been “business as usual.” The computer downtime also led to a backlog in services, but the hospital hoped to have much of that cleared over the weekend.
HSN had good backups in place and was in the process of bringing its computer systems back on line Friday. Appointments for cancer care treatment are not usually scheduled for the weekend, but appointments were being made on Saturday and Sunday in order to clear the backlog caused by the shutdown.
The shutdown of the HSN computer systems also impacted the Island family health teams, as they also utilize the hospital’s systems, but luckily the family health teams have their own separate Telus electronic medical records information system.
As of Monday, Mr. Vine said “we are by and large fully restored. There are a couple of more systems yet, but we are 99.9 percent back to normal and running as usual.”
Mr. Vine said that staff at the MHC were in on the weekend to enter in data and reduce the backlog of information in the system.
“Diagnostic imaging and the lab are still working on entering data and we are hoping to have that completed in the next couple of days,” he said. “But for the most part we are back up and doing business as usual.”
