Dr. Rian Kabir, a third-year psychiatry resident at the University of Louisville, always arrives to the school’s outpatient mental health clinic early. He likes to come prepared, having reviewed his patients’ charts and which medications they're taking before they arrive for their appointments. But today—following a global tech outage that begin in the early morning hours—that was impossible.
“When I came in, every single computer was down,” Dr. Kabir says, noting that he couldn’t review electronic patient records, couldn’t access the drug monitoring program he uses, or even submit prescriptions to pharmacies electronically. His team has reverted to handwriting everything on paper—like medical staff did a century ago—and it has slowed down everything in the clinic. “This is pretty insane,” Dr. Kabir says.
