Delays in restoring DHB system after fire

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The process to restore Lakes District Health Board's computer network system is progressing, but slowly.

A fire early on Monday in the DHB's main computer server room on the Rotorua Hospital site caused a major outage which has affected computer and patient management systems, along with email and Internet access.

Rotorua and Taupo Hospitals and the DHB's community services are all affected by the outage.

Staff had been working towards trying to bring the systems up, following clearing up and cleaning of the server room and power and computer server equipment inside, the DHB said in a statement today.

Incident controller Gary Lees, who is the DHB's director of nursing and midwifery, said in the process of bringing the systems back up, staff identified some additional infrastructure and environmental issues. He said those issues of temperature control, air quality and humidity control all had to be sorted and sorting them out was behind the delays.

"We are being cautious as we don't want to cause further damage to our servers," he said.

"These latest issues have likely added several more days to the first step of restoring the network, but these setbacks have shown us that there are lots of unknowns in the process. We still do not have a concrete time for having our systems back up and running."

People who have scheduled elective surgery or outpatient appointments will be contacted if the DHB needs to cancel their appointment. If patients don't hear from the DHB they are asked to turn up as usual.

Mr Lees has reminded people to expect delays when they go to Rotorua or Taupo Hospital, as assessing and treating patients can take longer without electronic access to records.

He said the DHB had received lots of help from neighbouring DHBs, service providers and primary care.