Mass Brigham cancels surgeries amid worldwide tech outage

Editor's Note

A global Microsoft server outage disrupting critical services from airline operations to banking is also having a significant impact on healthcare, according to multiple news reports.

On example is a Friday, July 19 report from CBS News reporting that Mass General Brigham, the largest health care system in the Boston area, had cancelled all non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits scheduled for that day. The system, which operates Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, kept clinics and emergency departments open for patients with urgent concerns.

Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity researcher, labeled the ongoing global tech disruption as “the largest IT outage in history,” according to a July 19 report in CNBC.

According to that report, the outage is due to an issue with the latest tech update from cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike. CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that the issue is not a security incident or cyberattack, and is being fixed.

Separately, “Microsoft cloud services were restored after an outage, the company said on Friday, even as many users continued to report issues,” CNBC reports.