Cyber Attack at UK NHS, Doctors blocked from accessing patient file

London: Hospitals across Britain cancelled appointments and turned away patients after a large-scale cyber attack by a suspected "ransomware" crippled major IT systems at the health facilities.

With the cyber attack, the software of NHS was blocked and doctors were blocked from patient files . As a result, emergency rooms were forced to divert patients.

One NHS IT worker told the Guardian: "At approximately 12.30 p.m. we experienced a problem with our email servers crashing. Following this a lot of our clinical systems and patient systems were reported to have gone down."

"A bitcoin virus pop-up message had been introduced on to the network asking users to pay $300 to be able to access their PCs. You cannot get past this screen.

"This followed with an internal major incident being declared and advised all trust staff to shut down all PCs in the trust and await further instructions," the worker said.

A number of hospitals across 16 trusts in London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire have been affected, resulting in many doctors resorting to pen and paper as phone and IT systems were shut down. Affected hospitals include those run by East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust, Barts Health in London, Essex Partnership university NHS trusts, the university hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust, Southport and Ormskirk hospital NHS trust and Blackpool teaching hospital NHS foundation trust.