Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Starting Tuesday night, Saint-Luc University Hospital encountered a complete IT system failure, which disabled all their hospital operations. All standard medical procedures had to stop while necessary IT systems needed to restart from Tuesday night until Wednesday. The hospital protects its admitted patients by completing necessary medical procedures, including dialysis and chemotherapy sessions.
The Saint-Luc University Hospital in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert continues to deal with major IT system problems that are blocking medical activities starting on Tuesday evening. The breakdown of IT systems caused all consultations to stop along with postponed surgeries and technical exams on Wednesday.
The hospital has ensured that patient safety is prioritised throughout the outage. The Saint-Luc hospital staff is working nonstop to fix the problem and return to full operation. The timeline estimates that the computer system may start working again on Thursday but this depends on further testing.
Patients admitted to the hospital get their care safely, while those with emergency room needs related to low-risk situations are sent to other healthcare facilities. Patients can contact the hospital’s hotline at 02 764 11 11 for assistance.
The team currently handles urgent calls about patient matters but does not process appointment rescheduling because it stays offline until the system returns to normal operations.
Saint-Luc confirms that patient data has not been exposed throughout the outage. The interruption in services caused disruptions for patients who needed their scheduled medical appointments. Our team works to fix this problem and keep patients informed about their status.
Broader Context of Healthcare IT Challenges in Brussels
The IT breakdown at Saint-Luc shows that healthcare systems face security flaws throughout their infrastructure. Although this incident is not linked to a cyberattack, similar disruptions have impacted hospitals across Europe in recent years:
- In 2020, a ransomware attack forced Düsseldorf University Hospital to delay critical medical treatments, which led to the transfer patient’s death when sent to another hospital.
- In 2021, the Health Service Executive of Ireland was hit by ransomware, which shut down all their hospitals across the nation for weeks, damaging patient treatment.
