With server down, Delhi AIIMS sees high number of incoming patients

New Delhi, Nov 29 (IANS): The All India Institute of Medical Sciences continued to work on a manual mode seven days after the server was hacked and on Tuesday witnessed a heavy rush of patients. The number of incoming patients visiting the hospital increased significantly leading to a rush like situation as people trooped in directly after the online appointment service stopped working. After the hacker's attack on the server system, the standard operating procedures (SOP) issued by the hospital underlined that the admission, discharge and transfer of patients would be done manually at the hospital till E-Hospital was down. From the online appointment to the sharing of the patients' report was being done manually. It has also led the AIIMS authorities to deploy additional staff to run the OPD services, diagnostics and laboratory works. After the alleged report of hacker's demand for Rs 200 crore from the AIIMS administration, the hospital on Monday said, "The data restoration and server cleaning is in progress and is taking some time due to the volume of the data and the large number of servers for the hospital services". "Measures were being taken for cyber security. All hospital services, including Out patients, In patients and the laboratories continue to run on manual mode," AIIMS said in the statement. However, police have denied reports that hackers have asked for Rs 200 crore in cryptocurrency as ransom to restore the system at the AIIMS. According to a source, the officials from the National Investigation Agency have also visited AIIMS and were working on the case. The AIIMS had said that to restore the digital services and support was being sought from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and National Informatics Centre (NIC).