More than 10,000 appointments were cancelled at the two London NHS trusts that were worst affected.
Around 170 patients have suffered harm as a result of a cyber attack on blood services at London hospitals and GP surgeries, reports suggest.
Pathology services provider Synnovis was the victim of a ransomware attack by a Russian cyber gang in June last year.
As a result more than 10,000 appointments were cancelled at the two London NHS trusts that were worst affected.
And a significant number of GP practices in London were unable to order blood tests for their patients.
Now the Health Service Journal (HSJ) has reported that there were nearly 600 “incidents” linked to the attack, with patient care suffering in 170 of these.
Tonga’s National Health Information System (NHIS) suffered a ransomware breach this week, says Dr ʻAna ʻAkauʻola his evening. The system has been shut down, and staff moved to manual operations.
The breach came to light during a parliament debate on the MEIDECC budget, when Deputy PM Dr Taniela Fusimalohi alerted MPs to the intrusion. Dr ʻAkauʻola confirmed she learned of the hack earlier this week and immediately summoned system administrators. She noted that staff member managing the NHIS “was unaware that it was a serious breach.”
The minister disclosed that hackers encrypted the NHIS and demanded payment, assuring MPs “the hackers won’t damage the information on the NHIS.” She also said she promptly emailed Dr Fusimalohi when she knew of the breach, who engaged the Australian High Commission.
Dr Fusimalohi confirmed an Australian cyber team arrived in Tonga today to help resolve the issue.
Bell Ambulance and Alabama Ophthalmology Associates have suffered data breaches affecting over 100,000 people after being targeted in ransomware attacks.
One of them is Milwaukee, WI-based Bell Ambulance, which provides ambulance services in the area. The company revealed last week in a data security notice that it detected a network intrusion on February 13, 2025.
An investigation showed that hackers gained access to files containing information such as name, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license number, as well as financial, medical and health insurance information.
Bell Ambulance did not say in its public notice how many individuals are impacted, but the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data breach tracker revealed on Monday that 114,000 people are affected.
The Medusa ransomware group announced hacking Bell Ambulance in early March, claiming to have stolen more than 200 Gb of data from its systems.
The second healthcare organization to confirm a data breach impacting more than 100,000 people is Birmingham, AL-based ophthalmology practice Alabama Ophthalmology Associates.
Medical testing services provider Laboratory Services Cooperative (LSC) is notifying 1.6 million individuals that their personal information was stolen in an October 2024 data breach.
As part of the cyberattack, which was identified on October 27, a threat actor accessed LSC’s network and accessed and exfiltrated certain files containing patient and employee information.
Health care breaches lead to legislation
Highlights of the new standard include:
Change Healthcare updated filings with the federal government to warn that about 100 million people had information accessed by hackers during a ransomware attack in February.
The Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office for Civil Rights said Change Healthcare notified them on October 22 that “approximately 100 million individual notices have been sent regarding this breach.”
A cohort of Russian-speaking hackers is demanding $50 million from a UK lab-services provider to end a ransomware attack that has paralyzed services at London hospitals for weeks, according to a representative for the group.
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