THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
November 1, 2022 at 17:44 JST
Takeshi Shimazu, left, head of Osaka General Medical Center, and Kazuhiro Iwase, director of the hospital, hold a news conference in Osaka’s Sumiyoshi Ward on Oct. 31. (Satoru Iizuka)
OSAKA--A major hospital here suspended routine medical services after a ransomware cyberattack shut down the facility’s electronic medical record system, officials said on Oct. 31.
Osaka General Medical Center in the city’s Sumiyoshi Ward is still performing emergency operations, but it has stopped providing outpatient services and postponed other surgeries, hospital officials said at a news conference.
Staff members noticed a network server failure at 6:40 a.m. on Oct. 31, along with messages sent in English that said “all files have been encrypted.”
The hackers demanded a ransom paid in the bitcoin cryptocurrency.
The hospital reported the attack to the prefectural police. Hospital officials said they will not negotiate with the hackers.
The disabling of the electronic medical record system has made it nearly impossible to calculate medical treatment fees or check details of the patients’ medical histories, the officials said.
“The quality (of surgeries) might be lowered,” Kazuhiro Iwase, director of the hospital, said.
Hospital staff started using paper medical records on Nov. 1.
Up to 1,000 patients were affected on Oct. 31, but the attack has not led to problems regarding the health status of the patients, the hospital said.
The hospital said it had no problems in management systems of the computer servers.
The general hospital, operated by the Osaka Prefectural Hospital Organization, has 865 beds and 36 departments as the region’s medical hub.
It is also designated as an advanced emergency medical service center and cancer hospital in the region.
Hospitals have recently been targeted in ransomware attacks.
In October 2021, the electronic medical record system at Handa Hospital in Tsurugi, Tokushima Prefecture, was attacked. The hospital was unable to perform normal medical services for about two months.
In January 2022, Nippon Dental University Hospital in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward had to stop accepting patients and partially suspend medical treatments for four days after its in-house server was infected with a computer virus.
(This article was written by Amane Sugawara, Tomomi Terasawa and Akihiro Tanaka.)
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