A global Microsoft outage has left pharmacies without email access and caused issues accessing prescriptions and cross-health service communications.
The disruption began on the evening of November 12 and has impacted a range of Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot.
“Still standing”
Speaking exclusively to C+D today, National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair Olivier Picard said pharmacies must “keep calm and carry on”, adding that an event like this “re-enforces the value of face-to-face care”.
“Pharmacies have gone through wars,” he said. “We’ve gone through pandemics and hundreds of years of history; pharmacies are still standing. We are an extremely resilient profession, and the NHS should lean on that.
Read more: Pharmacy ‘vital’ to neighbourhood health, says NHS company CEO
“Even when the system fails, we can continue providing a service, and that is something that shouldn’t go unnoticed.”
Picard thanked pharmacy teams for their work throughout the outage and reminded patients that community pharmacies’ “doors are open”.
“Our doors remain open”
C+D also visited Bedminster Pharmacy in Bristol today to speak to pharmacist Ade Williams as he navigated the impacts of the disruption.
Williams said community pharmacies are the “strong front door of the NHS”, and that “where everywhere else struggles, our doors remain open”.
He said that the outage should act as a reminder that pharmacies must be seen as a “critical” point of infrastructure and investment, and not “a burden that is put on contractors”.
Read more: ‘Fund and empower’ pharmacies to fight health inequality, bodies urge
Williams also urged the public to bear with colleagues while they worked through the situation, but assured them that “pharmacy will once again walk the tightrope and not drop anything”.
Community Pharmacy England has encouraged pharmacists to make use of telephones for urgent queries, “invoke business continuity plans” and avoid logging non-urgent IT tickets or re-sending emails.
And in a service update shared today, Microsoft said it had begun to resolve the issue and currently has “no evidence of malicious activity associated with [the] incident”.
Read more: Behind the counter: Bedminster Pharmacy, Bristol
The company added that it “will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation”.
It comes after Community Health Partnerships CEO Wendy Farrington-Chadd called community pharmacy a “vital component part” of neighbourhood health.
And it follows sector bodies calling on the government to “fund and empower” community pharmacies after new statistics highlighted “unacceptable health inequalities” across the country.
