Users across Singapore faced frustration on Wednesday morning as major public hospitals, polyclinics, and healthcare clusters experienced a widespread outage on their websites. The outage, which occurred around 11:30 am, left users unable to access these vital online resources.
Among the affected institutions were several of Singapore’s most renowned healthcare facilities, including Singapore General Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, National University Hospital, Changi General Hospital, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Sengkang General Hospital, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Ng Teng Fong Hospital, and the Institute of Mental Health.
Attempts to access these websites were met with error messages indicating that data could not be loaded. The outage also extended to the websites of the three healthcare clusters responsible for managing public hospitals and polyclinics in Singapore. SingHealth, overseeing the east, the National University Health System, responsible for the west, and the National Healthcare Group, handling the central region, were all affected.
A silver lining during this disruption was the functionality of the mobile phone apps associated with these hospitals, which remained accessible to users. Private hospitals in Singapore and the HealthHub website were also unaffected.
As users eagerly awaited the resolution of the issue, The Straits Times reached out to the affected hospitals, healthcare groups, and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) for more information on the cause and potential solutions to the problem.
This widespread outage serves as a reminder of the increasing importance of reliable online services in the healthcare sector and the need for robust backup systems to minimize disruptions during critical times. It is hoped that the affected institutions and authorities will quickly address the issue to ensure the continued smooth operation of these essential online resources.