In a move that would make a Luddite blush, the National Health Service has announced that 100 of its finest establishments have abandoned the 21st century entirely, resorting to pen and paper following a cyber-attack of unprecedented... well, predictability. Yes, folks, the same organisation that brought you the world's most expensive IT project since the Millennium Bug panic has now taught us all a valuable lesson: when the digital goes dark, reach for a Bic.
Sources confirm that the attack, launched from a server farm in a country whose name ends in ‘stan’, has crippled everything from patient records to the tea trolley ordering system. But fear not, for the NHS has a contingency plan: a handwritten note. We are now expecting a 47% increase in doctors' handwriting that looks like a spider dipped in ink and tap-danced across a prescription pad.
Let us pause to reflect on the ‘lessons learned’. Lesson one: spending billions on cyber security is less effective than simply turning off the computers. Lesson two: the human spirit is indomitable, especially when faced with the prospect of filing paperwork manually. Lesson three: the ghost of Florence Nightingale is laughing her bonnet off.
But the real question is this: whose decision was it to name our health service ‘National’ when it clearly cannot afford a firewall? Perhaps we should rebrand as the ‘Regional Health Service with Occasional Outages’. Or maybe we should just train all GPs in shorthand and hire a team of carrier pigeons for referrals.
The irony is so thick you could spread it on a stale NHS biscuit. We spent years digitising everything, only to discover that a determined teenager with a grudge and a Raspberry Pi can bring the whole edifice crashing down. And now? Now we are back to the medical equivalent of cave paintings.
In related news, stocks in fountain pen manufacturers have skyrocketed, and the Royal Mail is expected to hire 10,000 extra staff to handle the sudden surge in ‘please take your medication’ letters. Meanwhile, patients are being advised to bring their own stationery to appointments.
Biff Thistlethwaite, filing this report from a dark room lit only by the glow of a CRT monitor I found in a skip. Progress, eh? We have learned that the cloud is just someone else's computer, and that computer is apparently a Commodore 64 running Windows 95. The NHS cyber defence strategy for the future? A man with a roll of duct tape and a prayer.
So raise a glass of cheap airport gin to the NHS, the only organisation that can take a step forward and end up three steps back in a ditch. I am off to lick a stamp. Over and out.
