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In what is an incredibly rare event, a cyber attack has contributed to a death, according to UK officials.
A London hospital patient passed away last year after a cyber attack crippled British diagnostic services provider Synnovis in a 2024 cyber attack.
The cyber incident resulted in delayed blood test results as well as other things, according to the managing body of King’s College Hospital in South London and the NHS.
“One patient sadly died unexpectedly during the cyber attack. As is standard practice when this happens, we undertook a detailed review of their care,” an NHS spokesperson told The Register.
“The patient safety incident investigation identified a number of contributing factors that led to the patient’s death. This included a long wait for a blood test result due to the cyber attack impacting pathology services at the time.”
The patient’s family was notified of the determined cause, but the hospital has not provided any other details, according to reports.
Synnovis CEO Mark Dollar shared his sympathies with the family of the deceased.
“We are deeply saddened to hear that last year’s criminal cyber attack has been identified as one of the contributing factors that led to this patient’s death. Our hearts go out to the family involved,” Dollar said.
According to findings by the South East London Integrated Care Board last week, 170 patients suffered harm as a result of the Synnovis ransomware attack. Most instances were determined to be “low harm”.
This represents a rare yet very real result of cyber attacks on medical facilities and other critical infrastructure. Deaths are believed to have occurred as a result of cyber attacks before, including a German woman in 2020 as a result of delayed treatment.
The Synnovis ransomware attack occurred in June 2024 when the Qilin ransomware gang claimed to have exfiltrated 400 gigabytes from the company, which included patient names, dates of birth and NHS numbers,
“We understand that people may be concerned by this, and we are continuing to work with Synnovis, the National Cyber Security Centre and other partners to determine the content of the published files as quickly as possible,” said a spokesperson for NHS England said at the time.
“This includes whether it is data extracted from the Synnovis system, and if so, whether it relates to NHS patients.”
NHS London medical director Dr Chris Streather also stressed at the time that a number of procedures were delayed as a result of the attack.
“Although we are seeing some services operating at near normal levels and have seen a reduction in the number of elective procedures being postponed, the cyber attack on Synnovis is continuing to have a significant impact on NHS services in south-east London,” he said at the time, as seen by Yahoo! News.
“Having treatment postponed is distressing for patients and their families, and I would like to apologise to any patient who has been impacted by the incident, and staff are continuing to work hard to re-arrange appointments and treatments as quickly as possible.”
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