The server of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), Delhi has been down since Wednesday morning, affecting healthcare services it offers.
The AIIMS Delhi server is down since 7 am on Wednesday and outpatient department (OPD) and sample collection services have been affected as a result. Most of the OPD appointments at AIIMS Delhi are made online only.
It is suspected that a ransomware cyber attack could be behind the AIIMS server outage.
A statement by AIIMS Delhi said that National Informatics Centre (NIC), whose servers AIIMS uses, has said that the hospital may have been subjected to a ransomeware attack.
A ransomeware is kind of malicious software that locks a device and only opens it when the target pays a ransom to the attacker.
The AIIMS statement says that Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) of the Union government is on the case.
"With the server being down, the OPD and sample collection were handled manually but the sample system for those who do not have a Unique Health Identification were affected," an official source told PTI, adding that as each sample collected requires a barcode for tracking, the server going down has led to very few samples being collected.
(With PTI inputs)
