On November 23, the All India Institute of Health Sciences in New Delhi, India reported an IT outage due to a suspected ransomware attack.
In a statement, they said that the servers for their e-hospital system were down, affecting digital hospital services, including smart labs, billing, creating Reporting and appointment booking system. The predecessor AIIMS Institute currently manages more than 2,500 hospital beds.
AIIMS Delhi then immediately switch to manual operation. However, it has struggled to cater to patients without unique health IDs and handle patient admissions and discharges.
It also immediately sought the support of the National Informatics Center (NIC). and India Computer Emergency Response Team to restore its digital services while the incident was reported to Delhi police. The Intelligence Bureau, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Investigation Agency have also participated in the investigation.
The next day, AIIMS issued a new set of SOPs, stating that admission, discharge, and patient transfer would be done manually until the electronic hospital system was back online.
Meanwhile, Delhi Police has filed its first informational report on cyber terrorism, computer-related fraud and extortion against unidentified persons responsible for the attack.
Also, as a safety measure, internet services at AIIMS have been blocked.
Over the weekend, the hospital added that staff had been deployed to help run diagnostic, laboratory and OPD services while the electronic hospital system remained shut down. Since the incident, AIIMS Delhi has received 12,000 patients a day.
As of Monday, AIIMS remains in manual mode while IT server cleaning and data recovery efforts are ongoing, which indicates that it may take some time due to the volume of data and servers that are not available. they are processing.
Initial investigations into the cyber hack indicated the involvement of foreign actors. Meanwhile, Delhi police have denied reports of alleged cryptocurrency ransom demands from hackers.
WHY IT IMPORTANT
According to one News reported that the network incident may have exposed the hospital records of about 40 million patients. The exploited AIIMS database could contain PPIs of patients and healthcare workers, as well as records of blood donors, ambulances, immunizations, caregivers, and staff logins.
TREND TO BIGGER
This massive cyber attack took place when the AIIMS precursor institute was set up to fully roll out an e-hospital system next year as part of the transition to paperless hospitals. Electronic hospital platform, developed by NIC, is an HMIS hosted on the MeghRaj national cloud system that enables the digitization of internal processes and processes, and serves as a single digital platform connecting patients, patients, and patients. hospital and doctors.
Also starting next April, AIIMS Delhi will go Fully digital for payments. It is currently setting up a smart card payment facility at its counters.
