Health Sciences North (HSN) announced through Twitter this afternoon, that they have regained full access to its electronic medical records and medical imaging systems.
This welcome development comes after a four-day struggle to eliminate the computer virus disrupting programs and causing longer wait times in the emergency department at HSN, and affecting 24 other hospitals in northeastern Ontario.
HSN informed the public that 19 of the 21 affected hospitals that use Meditech as their primary electronic medical records (EMR) system have been gradually reconnected throughout the weekend. Eight of the 10 hospitals, including HSN that had medical imaging systems on downtime to quarantine the virus have regained full use of their systems.
The backlog of radiation treatments at the North East Cancer Centre is expected to be eliminated by Monday, with high priority treatments conducted yesterday. Outpatient cancer clinic consultations were able to continue during the downtime, reducing the backlog considerably, said HSN.
Electronic medical records for the cancer programs of 12 hospitals, looks to be recovered by Monday. While the four hospitals unable to access their email and back office servers have regained use of them.
In the tweet, HSN encouraged patients to begin attending their appointments as scheduled and thanked them in advance for their patience during this transitional period.
HSN has now regained access to its main electronic medical records and medical imaging systems. Recovery of remaining systems will continue over the coming week. Please click on the image below for more info. pic.twitter.com/3Us74m2mwW
— Health Sciences North (@HSN_Sudbury) January 20, 2019
