SINGAPORE — The websites of major public hospitals, polyclinics and healthcare clusters in Singapore could not be accessed for five hours on Wednesday (Nov 1), after they crashed at about 11.30am.
Access was restored at about 4.30pm.
Users were unable to access the websites of Singapore General, Tan Tock Seng, National University, Changi General, and KK Women's and Children's hospitals.
The official sites of Sengkang General, Khoo Teck Puat and Ng Teng Fong hospitals and the Institute of Mental Health were also down.
Attempts to access the portals were met with a message saying that data was not loaded.
The websites of all three public healthcare clusters were also inaccessible.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, national healthcare IT provider Synapxe said all online services were unavailable, including websites, e-mails, and the National University Health System hotline.
Public hospitals and clinics could still access patient records, it added. The post did not say what caused the crash.
The Synapxe website itself was down before coming back online at about 2.30pm.
Singapore has three healthcare clusters that manage all public hospitals and polyclinics.
Singapore Health Services, better known as SingHealth, runs the hospitals and polyclinics in the east while the National University Health System runs those in the west, and the National Healthcare Group runs those in the central region.
The HealthHub website and private hospital websites in Singapore, however, appeared unaffected.
In response to queries, a SingHealth spokesman said: "There is currently an Internet access disruption affecting all public healthcare clusters. Services requiring Internet applications like websites are inaccessible. For appointments and billing services, patients can use the SingHealth Health Buddy app.
"Clinical services remain accessible and unaffected. We are currently working with Synapxe, our healthcare IT partner, to resolve the issue, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused."
The Straits Times has contacted Synapxe, hospitals, healthcare groups and the Infocomm Media Development Authority for more information.
This is a developing story.
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