NHS England has confirmed that patient data was stolen in the recent cyber attack affecting organisations in South East London.
It has issued an update saying the attack on the pathology service provider Synnovis led to data being stolen from its systems, leading to disruptions at organisations including Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospitals NHS Trust and GPs in the area.
It said that at present there is no evidence the cyber criminals have published a copy of the laboratory information management system database on which patient test requests and results are stored, although Synnovis’ investigations are ongoing.
Complex investigation
“Investigations of this type are complex and can take time,” NHS England said in a statement. “Given the complexity of the investigation it may be some weeks before it is clear which individuals have been impacted.
“Local health systems will continue to work together to manage the impact on patients with additional resources put in to ensure urgent blood samples can still be processed, while laboratories are now able to see historic patient records.”
It added that it understand public concerns and that and Synnovis is working at pace to carry out the further analysis required to understand the full scale and nature of the data released and patients impacted.
