SASKATOON – Phone lines and communication systems throughout the Saskatoon Health Region went down Thursday, affecting hospitals and some long-term care homes and medical clinics. Emergency services and 911 systems were not affected, according to the health region.
The systems went down at about 2 p.m. The region said it didn’t affect heating and ventilation systems.
Medical professionals were forced to manually transfer CT scans, X-rays and lab results between locations, causing delays.
Saskatoon Health Region CEO Dan Florizone said the same IT systems went down this weekend for about an hour. A band-aid solution patched up the problem, but clearly it didn’t work.
“We’ve become, as a society and as a system, highly reliant on these automated systems, so when they go down like this, we can really show it has an impact on the way we operate, and by that I mean operationally speaking on how we communicate, how we send information,” he explained.
Cisco is the platform provider for the region. All systems were fully operational at 10:45 p.m.
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