Wales NHS IT 'glitches' left cancer doctors without records

First Minister Mark Drakeford said there were "glitches" as the systems were being replaced.

Doctors across Wales were left without a vital NHS IT system used to manage cancer patient's details.

Canisc and the Welsh Patient Administration System suffered failures on Friday, affecting Betsi Cadwaladr and Swansea Bay health boards and Cardiff's Velindre Cancer Centre.

All systems are now back online, the NHS Wales Informatics Service said.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said there were "glitches" as the systems were being replaced.

"That replacement has been interrupted by coronavirus as the new system is brought in," he said.

"If there are glitches in the movement from the one to the other, there were always plans in place to manage that and it will be being managed in localities by the people who are the closest to the service on the ground."

Hardware failures

On Twitter on Friday, the NHS Wales Informatics Service (NHSWIS) said: "At around 3:20pm we experienced hardware issues which prevented some users accessing patient administration systems (WPAS) in the Swansea Bay and BCU Central regions.

"It also affected users accessing the cancer information (CANISC) system.

"All systems are back online."

Access to test results, documents, imaging and other parts of the electronic patient records were not affected," said the NHSWIS.

The issue was caused by concurrent hardware failure at two data centres.