Mater Dei Hospital’s clinical patient administration system, the health service’s IT backbone, was down for about seven hours on Wednesday, forcing staff to carry out most of their administrative work manually.

Hospital CEO Ivan Falzon confirmed the system, used for patient admissions, bed management and outpatients, had failed at about 6am after the software had been updated during the night.

As a result, staff had to resort to writing information, which would have to be inputted into the system once all the issues were resolved, Mr Falzon said.

“This was not ideal, of course, but we have fall-back positions, and all staff are trained in the eventuality of such a failure.”

Hospital sources complained the system failure disrupted the day-to-day operation due to restrictions on doing certain jobs, such as blood test orders.

All staff are trained in the eventuality of such a failure

One source complained that files could not be transferred and thus, appointments could not be booked.

Mr Falzon said the system was used throughout the hospital, with some departments relying on it more than others. This was the case for the accident and emergency department, where it is used when admitting patients. He stressed, however, that the failure in no way impacted the patients’ treatment.

“Most patients did not even realise, and most modules were up and running again by early afternoon,” Mr Falzon said.

While initial investigations suggest the system failed as a result of the update, Mr Falzon said he would be working with the Health Ministry to see where the problem started.

A Health Ministry spokeswoman said a scheduled update intended between 3am and 7am took longer than anticipated.

“During the time the system was down, the hospital adopted the business continuity plans in place for such eventualities,” she said, adding the system was “fully available by 1pm”.