Hospital Emergency Departments are one of those most impacted by the attack on the Health Service Executive IT system.
Dr Gareth Quinn is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine at University Hospital Limerick.
He says the ED has changed beyond recognition since last Friday’s cyber-attack.
“It’s only now we’re realising I think how reliant we are on IT to do the job. Our ED in Limerick is a very busy department with maybe 250 patients coming through every day.”
“We have an IT tracking system that allows us to keep track of those patients and we know who is in the department, where they are, whether they’ve been seen, how long they’ve been waiting, what doctor has seen them and whether a bed has been booked and so on. All of that is gone and we’re back to paper.”
