B.C. hospitals pivot to paper amid CrowdStrike global technology outage

VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s health minister says 50,000 devices at the province’s hospitals were impacted by the CrowdStrike global technology outage, forcing hospital staff to pivot to using paper to manage everything from lab work to meal orders.

Adrian Dix says experts began immediately working on the problem, which has impacted computers running Microsoft Windows, and that the systems are beginning to come back online.

Dix says the event had “a profound impact on staff” but they did everything possible to limit the impact on patients.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows — and that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

B.C. Premier David Eby says the outage had no impact on the provincial wildfire service, 911, or any of the province’s police departments.

He says the call centre at the Ministry of Children and Family Development is experiencing some slowdowns and people may be delayed in getting their B.C. family benefits, which are administered by Revenue Canada.

Eby says information put on paper will need to be input into the electronic health records of hospitals and care facilities across the province, which “can be a fair bit of work.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2024.

The Canadian Press