Technical issues prevent access to major healthcare websites but patient care remains unaffected.
Disruption of Healthcare Websites
On November 6, 2024, users across Singapore faced a major disruption as websites of key public hospitals, polyclinics, and healthcare clusters went down for over seven hours. The issue began around 9:20 AM, impacting the websites of institutions such as Singapore General Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, National University Hospital, and others. Access was restored around 4:30 PM, but during the outage, several key healthcare portals, including those of Sengkang General Hospital, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, were inaccessible.
Impact on Clinical Services
Despite the outage, hospitals reassured the public that clinical services and patient records were not affected. The SingHealth and National University Health System (NUHS) confirmed that patient care continued without disruption. Synapxe, the IT service provider responsible for public healthcare systems, stated that investigations were underway to determine the cause of the technical failure.
Community Response
Many users, including healthcare professionals, experienced little disruption in daily operations. Junior doctors reported no change in the usual workflow, and hospitals clarified that patient management continued via mobile apps like Health Buddy and OneNUHS.
Security Concerns and Investigation
Cybersecurity experts raised concerns about the root cause of the disruption, noting that the affected websites shared common IP addresses, indicating they were hosted on the same server. While the issue did not compromise patient data, it raised alarms about the vulnerabilities of centralized web hosting.
This disruption occurred just a month after Singapore experienced a large-scale banking outage with DBS. The incident also brought to mind the 2018 SingHealth data breach, which prompted significant improvements to the country’s data security measures.
Resolution
By 5:15 PM, most of the affected services had been restored. Authorities and IT providers continue to investigate the technical failure.
