The virus that forced Health Sciences North to put some of its systems in downtime this week originated from another hospital in the region, said the hospital's senior vice-president, Patient Experience and Digital Transformation, and found its way into the HSN computer network.
Mark Hartman said it would be premature to disclose from which hospital the virus originated, but security experts are continuing their forensic analysis.
“We don't have any indication of any ransom request or anything of that nature,” Hartman said. “As far as HSN is concerned, this was an accidental infection.”
HSN continues to make progress on getting its system back up and running, he said.
“Our IT teams and security firm worked throughout the night to get our systems to a stable and safe position,” he said. “Over the course of the day today, they've been applying patches and anti-virus updates to the systems. We are working towards reinstating, in particular, some of our key clinical systems by the end of the day today.”
Police have been notified of the situation, but there is no investigation currently taking place on their part, he said.
As for canceled services as a result of the virus, Hartman said HSN was able to perform some of the chemotherapy treatments on Thursday that had been canceled on Wednesday.
“We have been able to do more today using hard copy information that was available to the team,” he said. “We are still rescheduling chemotherapy and radiation treatment for the weekend, and patients have been contacted directly.”
Hartman said HSN does prepare for these types of situations where they are required to have down time, where staff is required to revert to manual documentation or print outs which are moved around the building to where they have to go.
“It's been difficult for staff, but it's been incredibly impressive how our physicians, staff and volunteers and senior management have pulled together to work extremely long hours to get us through this and minimize the impact on patients,” Hartman said.
He stressed this is not just an HSN issue, and that the virus has affected 24 hospitals in northeastern Ontario in one shape or another. Those hospitals haven't been infected by the virus, but they cut off access to our systems to prevent that from happening.
“As soon as the infection was identified at HSN, we shut down our system to protect them, and that impacted access for every other hospital in the region,” Hartman said.
