Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust managed to overwrite a maternity database spanning more than a decade after someone forgot to change a setting in a reused set of computer instructions.
The process ran against the wrong database and overwrote the Trust's old Medway maternity records database, which contained information about women and babies treated between September 2011 and November 2022.
The good news is that the Trust has managed to recover the clinical information it needs for patient care, including notes, observations, and test results.
NUH has been unable to restore the audit history showing who viewed maternity records during the 11-year period covered by the database.
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The process ran against the wrong database and overwrote the Trust's old Medway maternity records database, which contained information about women and babies treated between September 2011 and November 2022.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
Human error sent reused instructions at the wrong database, taking historical access logs with it.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust managed to overwrite a maternity database spanning more than a decade after someone forgot to change a setting in a reused set of computer instructions.
The mishap happened on August 18, when staff carrying out routine technical work to copy a radiotherapy database for reporting used a set of pre-written instructions that had before been run against another hospital system.
The process ran against the wrong database and overwrote the Trust's old Medway maternity records database, which contained information about women and babies treated between September 2011 and November 2022.
Nottingham University Hospitals said the incident was the result of human error and was escalated within minutes of being discovered.
The good news is that the Trust has managed to recover the clinical information it needs for patient care, including notes, observations, and test results. Current maternity patients and services are also unaffected, and NUH said no patient information was accessed or used inappropriately as a result of the incident.
NUH has been unable to restore the audit history showing who viewed maternity records during the 11-year period covered by the database.
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