Hospital services and around a two thirds of GP practices in the north have been affected by a global IT outage.
All emergency services continue to be provided and the public is being urged to attend appointments and access services as normal, unless advised otherwise.
The outage is believed to have been caused by issues around Microsoft and cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. It is not understood to be the result of a cyber attack.
In a statement the Department of Health (DoH) confirmed that IT issues resulted in a “a number of impacts on health and social care in Northern Ireland” but added that patient care “remains the priority”.
Hospitals have seen patient bookings into operating theatres, access to staff rosters, capturing digital endoscopy images as well as radiotherapy and some primary care services affected.
Around two thirds of GP practices are unable to access clinical systems to view and update patient records, generate routine patient prescriptions and see test requests and results.
Patients requiring urgent supplies of their regular medications - excluding controlled medications - have been advised to contact their community pharmacists.
Affected practices will be operating on an emergency appointment basis only until the IT issues have been resolved.
Dr Alan Stout, chair of the British Medical Association’s NI council said: “We are aware that a number of our members and colleagues working in HSC services, particularly in primary care, are experiencing issues as a result of this global IT outage.
“However, they continue to provide care to the best of their ability while this problem is resolved. We would echo calls for anyone contacting HSC organisations today to be patient with staff at this challenging time.”
A spokesperson for the DoH said: “The issues are not a result of core HSC operated technologies being affected, but third party systems operated by suppliers that use the impacted technology product.
“Impacted HSC services and teams are being asked to temporarily invoke the plans they have in place for continuing business without some of their IT systems, including reverting to established paper based processes where necessary.
“HSC technology teams are working intensively with third party vendors to rectify the issue by removing the impacted component and will continue bringing systems back to normal during the course of the day, as well as working with operational teams to find and fix impacted services.”
