Many around the world awoke Friday morning to news of a global technology outage, affecting a wide range of businesses, industries and nations.
The challenges stem from a Microsoft Corp. outage, based on a glitch due to CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity company.
In Western New York, like in many other areas, it raised questions of health care.
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center patient appointments, procedures and surgeries are proceeding as planned today. While the center does have technology disruptions stemming from the outage, care is not affected.
“We appreciate everyone’s patience, as there may be some delays in clinic operations as we work to bring all systems back up,” according to a statement from Roswell. “We are grateful to our team for their quick response to these widespread issues.”
Kaleida Health is also encouraging all staff and patients to report as scheduled, which includes outpatient procedures, surgeries, any type of physician appointment and ambulatory and clinic visits.
The health care network was initially affected from an information technology standpoint when Crowdstrike ran its worldwide update around midnight, according to a statement from Kaleida.
Around 3 a.m., the health care network activated its internal incident command center to make sure it could maintain operations.
“To that end, we implemented our normal computer ‘down time’ procedures to ensure safe patient care. Throughout this morning our IT team and operational leaders have done an incredible job bringing our computer systems back online,” the statement said.
Catholic Health has activated its internal incident command center to ensure operations. The health care system has experienced some communication delays and has instituted down-time safety procedures.
Its IT tech is working on bringing back any affected systems, according to a statement.
"All of our facilities, including medical offices, are open. Emergency and critical care have not been affected and non-urgent appointments and surgeries may be running on a slightly delayed scheduled," the statement said.