Critical incident at Synnovis disrupts pathology services across SE London

A critical incident at pathology system provider Synnovis has disrupted services at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and primary care across south east London, Digital Health News has learned.

Synnovis is a partnership between SYNLAB UK & Ireland, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT and King’s College Hospital NHS FT which is responsible for transforming hospital-based laboratory and diagnostic services into an integrated ‘hub and spoke’ pathology network for south east London.

In an email to staff on 3 June 2024, seen by Digital Health News, Professor Ian Abbs, chief executive at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, said that an “ongoing critical incident” was having a major impact on pathology services.

“I can confirm that our pathology partner Synnovis experienced a major IT incident earlier today, which is ongoing and means that we are not currently connected to the Synnovis IT servers,” Professor Abbs said.

“This is having a major impact on the delivery of our services, with blood transfusions being particularly affected.

“Some activity has already been cancelled or redirected to other providers at short notice as we prioritise the clinical work that we are able to safely carry out,” he continued.

He also confirmed that the incident was affecting King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and primary care across south east London.

“An incident response structure has been stood up, with colleagues from across the trust meeting regularly to assess the situation and put contingency plans into place,” Professor Abs said.

Synnovis went live with a Laboratory Information Management System in October 2023 which consolidated multiple systems at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS FT, and King’s College Hospital NHS FT, into one.

In April 2024, SC Media reported that SYNLAB Italia had been hit by a cyber attack which disrupted its laboratories, medical centres, and sampling points.

Meanwhile, NHS Dumfries and Galloway announced on 6 May 2024 that it is working with the National Cyber Security Centre following the publication of around three terabytes of patient data on the dark web, which was stolen in a ransomware attack in March 2024.

At the time of publication Synnovis and SYNLAB had not responded to Digital Health New’s request for comment.