Last-minute canceled surgeries. Collapse of electronic medical record systems. Ambulance detours. Disrupted imaging appointments. What sort of disaster could lead to this amalgamation of catastrophic consequences?
The name “CrowdStrike” has become a buzzword among the masses. CrowdStrike is a streamlined company that employs artificial intelligence to prevent breaches and cyberattacks (CrowdStrike, 2024). The CrowdStrike software bug, unleashed on July 19, 2024, wreaked global havoc by sabotaging millions of Microsoft-based systems, such that many professionals witnessed the “Blue Screen of Death” on their monitors, notably in healthcare fields (Fox, 2024).
Imagine waking up on the day of a long-awaited surgery, only to find out that your procedure has been canceled. Why? Due to a global software bug. This scenario was the experience of patients at the Mass General Brigham hospitals, as surgeries categorized as nonurgent were canceled (Fox, 2024). In other areas, it was also reported that ambulances were directed away from affected healthcare centers, instructed to escort patients to other medical institutions for proper care (Fox, 2024).
The labor and delivery department at the Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center experienced profound concerns (Simmons-Duffin, 2024). The department lost the ability to digitally track infants’ vital signs, which presented tremendous health risks to vulnerable newborns that required monitoring. The security system that prevented infant abductions failed. To mitigate the risk of adverse consequences, workarounds were carried out manually (Simmons-Duffin, 2024). Nurses were instructed to track the health of individual newborns (Simmons-Duffin, 2024). Security guards stationed at doorways worked to ensure that the infants were kept safe (Simmons-Duffin, 2024).
According to one Bay Area health professional, physicians resorted to using Apple work phones to look up patient records, as computers in patient exam rooms equipped with Windows software were completely unable to restart.
The software bug also presented major concerns regarding the ability to understand a patient’s health history. Without easy access to the electronic medical record – which houses the entirety of patients’ medical history – physicians, nurses, and other members of healthcare teams could not identify patient allergies, prior and current medications, and health problems. This lack of background information hindered patient care, making hospital operations inefficient and potentially unsafe.
As technology continues to improve, the risk of error looms large. Days after the incident, the full effects and mechanisms that led to the outage still require further investigation. Critics point to shortcomings that include the notion that precautions should have been taken to prohibit such a large-scale outage from occurring (Schulz, 2024). The “routine software update” that CrowdStrike attempted to perform resulted in billions of dollars in losses—not quite the routine effects that were anticipated (Schulz, 2024).
The degree to which this technological oversight affected individuals globally points to how dependent our societies have become on Windows systems and technology as a whole. This raises questions about our abilities to accomplish daily tasks without the advent of such technology. Winston Churchill’s famous quote reads, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” (Medical Confidence, 2020). In light of the recent CrowdStrike information technology (IT) outage, these words take on more than one meaning. Perhaps there is much to be learned about resourcefulness and self-sufficiency from history.
References
CrowdStrike. (2024). Why CrowdStrike? https://www.crowdstrike.com/why-crowdstrike/
Fox, A. (2024). Healthcare recovering from CrowdStrike outage. Healthcare IT News. https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthcare-recovering-crowdstrike-outage
Fox, A. (2024). Worldwide IT outage disrupts healthcare delivery. Healthcare IT News. https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/worldwide-it-disruption-disrupts-healthcare-delivery
Medical Confidence. (2020). “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill. English, News. https://www.medicalconfidence.com/blog/those-that-fail-to-learn-from-history-are-doomed-to-repeat-it-winston-churchill/#:~:text=it.”%20Winston%20Churchill-,“Those%20that%20fail%20to%20learn%20from%20history%20are,to%20repeat%20it.”%20Winston%20Churchill&text=History%20never%20repeats%20itself.,is%20distinct%20from%20those%20past.
Schulz, B. (2024). CrowdStrike shares details on cause of global tech outage. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-global-microsoft-tech-outage-cause/74531071007/
Simmons-Duffin, S. (2024). The Crowdstrike outage disrupted many industries. Hospitals were especially vulnerable. Health News Florida. https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2024-07-23/the-crowdstrike-outage-disrupted-many-industries-hospitals-were-especially-vulnerable