Synapxe finds no evidence of data compromise in Singapore public healthcare institutions websites outage

SINGAPORE: Synapxe, the national health tech agency, confirmed ongoing investigations into the outage of Singapore’s public hospital and polyclinic websites. They reassured that “no evidence to indicate that data and internal networks have been compromised”.

On Wednesday (1 Nov), a substantial technical disruption affected numerous public hospitals and polyclinics in Singapore, causing their websites to become inaccessible.

Synapxe in a statement attributed the issue to an “internet access disruption” impacting all public healthcare clusters.

Access to the websites of major public hospitals, polyclinics, and healthcare clusters in Singapore was restored around 4:30 p.m. following more than seven-hour disruption on Wednesday.

According to Synapxe’s latest update on their Facebook page at 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, an internet connectivity issue disrupted services at public healthcare institutions from 9:20 a.m. on 1 November.

From 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday, internet connectivity at public healthcare institutions has been progressively restored. By 5.15 pm, most of the affected services were restored.

Despite the disruption, Synapxe emphasized that patient care was unimpeded, with clinical services, access to patient records, and appointment systems remaining accessible throughout.

Synapxe said Investigations into the outage of internet connectivity are ongoing.

“We will continue to monitor the situation closely. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank everyone for your patience.”

Synapxe plays a crucial role in facilitating the operations of 46 public healthcare institutions, including acute hospitals and polyclinics.

Additionally, it supports a network of approximately 1,400 community partners, ranging from nursing homes to general practitioners.

Singapore’s healthcare system operates through three clusters: SingHealth (east), National Healthcare Group (central), and NUHS (west).

The websites of Singapore General Hospital, National University Hospital and Tan Tock Seng Hospital were among those affected.

Notably, the outage extended beyond individual hospital websites, impacting the online portals of Singapore’s three key public healthcare clusters: SingHealth, the National Healthcare Group, and National University Health System.

Before the services were restored, users attempting to access these sites on Wednesday were met with error messages indicating that the respective URLs could not be retrieved.

While the technical glitch appeared to be confined to the public healthcare sector, the websites of private hospitals, notably Mount Elizabeth Novena and Raffles Medical Group, remained unaffected, maintaining their online presence and services.

Amidst the disruptions, the Ministry of Health and HealthHub websites continued to operate unaffected.