Staff at Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust were temporarily unable to send or receive emails on Thursday as a global Microsoft Outlook outage disrupted hospital communications across the West of England.
What Happened
The trust told patients to phone the relevant clinic or switchboard directly rather than email if they needed to make urgent contact. It asked people to keep attending appointments as planned unless they were told otherwise, and said it was seeing increased demand on its phone lines.
Bristol NHS Foundation Trust said essential hospital services and procedures were continuing as normal, and that patients with urgent enquiries should use the number on their appointment letter. Somerset NHS Foundation Trust said it was unaffected apart from possible delays to email. Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Community Health said it was running its business continuity plans.
Microsoft Says Services Are Recovering
Microsoft first put the problem down to “elevated load” on its server infrastructure. It later said a number of servers had been unexpectedly unavailable, straining the remaining infrastructure, and that it was working to return them to service. Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said the outage was not caused by a cyber-security incident.
At about 09:30 GMT on Friday, Microsoft said it was seeing early signs of stabilisation, but service capacity had not yet returned to normal levels.
Background
The outage affected Outlook, Microsoft Teams, the Copilot assistant and wider Microsoft 365 services. BBC reporting said Downdetector had recorded problems in more than 70 countries. In the United States, more than 130,000 users reported problems with Outlook at one point on Thursday afternoon Eastern time, according to Downdetector data cited by the New York Times. Reuters reported that the disruption had stretched beyond 12 hours.
NHS England said patients should continue to use 999 in an emergency, call 111, or attend their local pharmacy.
What Happens Next
Microsoft has not said when full service will be restored. Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust has not said when email will resume. Patients should keep to their appointments unless the trust contacts them, and call 999 in an emergency.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
