Microsoft Outage Disrupts Work of Britain's National Health Service

A Microsoft service outage, which may have left millions of people worldwide with access problems, has significantly disrupted the work of the UK's National Health Service (NHS). The problems also affect the company's email system Outlook and the collaboration platform Teams, forcing healthcare organisations to work under more difficult conditions.

Rachel Harrison, head of the public services section at the GMB trade union, said NHS staff who take emergency calls are unable to pass on patient data in the usual way. In her view, this seriously slows work and could cause chaos. She added, however, that urgent and life-threatening calls appear not to be affected.

NHS bodies have already posted on social media about difficulties with Microsoft services.

Pharmacies have also been hit. The National Pharmacy Association, which represents independent pharmacies in the UK, told the news agency AFP that the outage is affecting its members' ability to contact doctors' surgeries. This is delaying the processing of patients' prescriptions.

Microsoft has ruled out malicious activity as the cause of the outage. The source gives no other explanation for why the services stopped working normally.