Websites of All Singapore Public Hospitals, Polyclinics, Healthcare Groups Experience Outage

[Edited] In a major disruption on Wednesday, the websites of several public hospitals, polyclinics, and healthcare clusters in Singapore were inaccessible for over seven hours.

Credit: ST

The crash occurred at around 9:20 am and lasted until approximately 4:30 pm when access was finally restored.

During the outage, users were unable to access the websites of prominent healthcare institutions such as Singapore General Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, National University Hospital, Changi General Hospital, and KK Women's and Children's Hospital.

The official sites of Sengkang General Hospital, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, and the Institute of Mental Health were also affected, along with the websites of all three public healthcare clusters. Despite the website crash, patient records remained accessible, and clinical services were unaffected, according to statements from the hospitals and their IT service provider, Synapxe, on Facebook.

Synapxe reassured the public that there was no evidence of data compromise or internal network breaches. A junior doctor at a public hospital, who preferred to remain anonymous, stated that the disruption had minimal impact on their daily routine. "I barely noticed it. It was just a regular day for me," the doctor said. SingHealth, one of the healthcare clusters, advised patients to use the Health Buddy app for appointments and billing services while the websites were down.

The National University Health System (NUHS) also reported temporary unavailability of services such as their contact center, websites, emails, and certain features of the OneNUHS app.

However, both SingHealth and NUHS confirmed that their clinical services were not affected and were gradually being restored. Synapxe, in a late-night Facebook post, stated that investigations into the outage were ongoing. The disruption primarily affected services requiring internet connectivity, including websites, emails, and a few internet-facing applications. Internet connectivity was progressively restored from 4:30 pm, with most affected services back online by 5:15 pm.

Singapore has three healthcare clusters responsible for managing public hospitals and polyclinics. SingHealth oversees the institutions in the east, NUHS in the west, and the National Healthcare Group in the central region.

Fortunately, the HealthHub website and private hospital websites in Singapore remained unaffected by the crash. Kevin Reed, the chief information security officer of cybersecurity firm Acronis, expressed concern over the shared IP addresses of the affected websites, suggesting they were hosted on the same server.

He emphasized the importance of maintaining separate data systems to prevent widespread outages. The incident serves as a reminder of the 2018 SingHealth data breach, where hackers stole the personal particulars of 1.5 million patients. Integrated Health Information Systems, Synapxe's predecessor, was fined $750,000, while SingHealth was fined $250,000 for the breach.

The incident prompted a Committee of Inquiry, which made 16 recommendations to enhance data protection. In conclusion, the websites of Singapore's public hospitals and polyclinics experienced a seven-hour crash, causing inconvenience for users.

However, patient records and clinical services remained accessible and unaffected. Investigations into the outage are ongoing, and steps will likely be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.

---

• Websites of major public hospitals, polyclinics, and healthcare clusters in Singapore crashed for over seven hours.

• Patient records and clinical services were unaffected during the outage.

• SingHealth and NUHS reassured the public that their clinical services were gradually being restored.

Source: Straits Times