A broken air conditioning system on a hot day takes down UNC Health computers
UNC Health lost access to computer programs at its clinics and hospitals across the state Tuesday afternoon after an air conditioning system failed at a remote data center.
Doctors, nurses and other practitioners were able to continue treating patients, said spokesman Alan Wolf, but access to medical records was disrupted for about an hour and a half.
The outage began about 3 p.m. when an air conditioning condenser at the data center stopped working, Wolf said. As the temperature in the center rose, computer servers automatically shut down.
“Our IT experts were able to restore most systems again quickly,” Wolf wrote in a statement. “And our clinical providers were able to continue providing patient care.”
The servers were all operational again by 4:30 p.m.
UNC Health staff used paper forms while the electronic medical records system was down, something they’re accustomed to doing whenever there are power or computer problems, Wolf said.
UNC’s computer outage came just days after a global failure of Microsoft systems that originated with a software update by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company used by governments and businesses around the world.
UNC Health said the CrowdStrike update caused “scattered computer outages” across its system but that patient services were not affected.
