Websites of Singapore public hospitals, polyclinics restored after 5-hour crash
No access to prominent healthcare institutions' websites, although clinical services remain unaffected
SINGAPORE — Major public hospitals, polyclinics and healthcare clusters in Singapore experienced website outage on Wednesday (1 November), beginning from around 11.30am. The websites were restored around 4.30pm.
Healthcare institutions face widespread website outage
During the outage, users were unable to access several prominent healthcare institutions' websites, including Singapore General Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, National University Hospital, Changi General Hospital and KK Women's and Children's Hospital.
The websites of Sengkang General Hospital, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Ng Teng Fong Hospital and the Institute of Mental Health were also affected by the outage.
National healthcare IT provider Synapxe addresses the disruption
A check by Yahoo Southeast Asia showed that users attempting to access these websites received an error message indicating that data could not be loaded. The websites of all three public healthcare clusters were similarly inaccessible.
In response to the disruption, Synapxe, the national healthcare IT provider, posted a message on Facebook explaining that all online services, such as websites, emails, and the National University Health System hotline, were temporarily unavailable.
However, the message did not specify the cause of the issue. Synapxe's website was also briefly down, but was back online by approximately 2.30pm.
Uninterrupted clinical services amid website inaccessibility
Singapore's public healthcare system is divided into three healthcare clusters, each overseeing specific regions.
SingHealth manages hospitals and polyclinics in the eastern part of the city, the National University Health System covers facilities in the western region, and the National Healthcare Group is responsible for those in the central area.
A SingHealth spokesperson told The Straits Times, "There is currently an Internet access disruption affecting all public healthcare clusters. Services requiring Internet applications like websites are inaccessible. For appointments and billing services, patients can use the SingHealth Health Buddy app.
"Clinical services remain accessible and unaffected. We are currently working with Synapxe, our healthcare IT partner, to resolve the issue, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."
The HealthHub website and private hospital websites in Singapore appeared to be unaffected by the disruption.
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