Microsoft outage disrupts hospital communications

Hospitals in the West of England are experiencing disruption following a global Microsoft Outlook email outage.

The technical issue has affected communications at NHS trusts, raising concerns about the potential impact on appointments, enquiries and day-to-day operations.

The outage is affecting services including Teams, Outlook and Copilot across the world. Microsoft said the cause was "elevated load" on its server infrastructure.

Bristol NHS Foundation Trust reassured patients that essential hospital services and procedures were continuing as normal. Patients with urgent enquiries were advised to contact the relevant hospital department using the number on their appointment letter.

In a statement, Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust said it was aware of the outage and staff were "temporarily unable to send or receive emails".

"If you need to contact us urgently, please call the relevant clinic or switchboard directly rather than sending an email. Thank you for your patience," they added.

Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) Community Health said its services were also continuing to operate under "tried and tested business continuity plans".

"Please continue to use our services and attend appointments as planned unless we contact you otherwise.

"We are experiencing increased demand on our phone lines, and thank you for your patience and understanding," it added.

At about 09:30 GMT, Microsoft said it was seeing "early signs of stabilisation" but service capacity had "not yet returned to normal levels".

The global outage started on Thursday, with monitoring website Downdetector seeing problems reported in more than 70 countries.

Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said the issue was not caused by a cyber-security incident, ruling out any malicious or hacking activity.

"We regret that today's outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue," Lamanna said in a post on X.

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