Several General Practitioners' (GP) surgeries in Kent and Medway in the UK have been unable to access online services after an IT outage.

As reported by Pulse Today, the outage occurred on January 19 and left practices unable to access patient records, medication histories, appointment systems, or telephone systems.

According to the NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB), the issue was related to a "multi-site network disruption" caused by a connectivity performance problem within a data center.

As of January 20, the systems were restored, but several GP practices, according to Digital Health's report, remain impacted.

Kent Local Medical Committee published a notice regarding the issues, informing patients that the "majority of GP practices" across Kent and Medway were impacted.

It adds: "GP teams have been implementing contingency and backup arrangements, but patients are likely to experience significant disruption when contacting practices. Online services have been suspended, and phone lines are expected to be extremely busy. In some cases, practices do not have the ability to receive telephone calls due to the outage."

The committee also said that it was likely that issues would remain for several days even once the systems are restored, and that "GP leaders have repeatedly raised concerns about the resilience and safety risks of GP IT systems in Kent and Medway following multiple outages across the region over the past year."

The data center in question has not been shared.

The Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells (MTW) NHS Trust, which supports the Kent and Medway Data Warehouse, declined to share its data center information in a Freedom of Information Request in February 2025.

Many Trusts operate their own data centers, however there are colocation providers in the Kent area.

The sentiment of concern about NHS digital infrastructure is not isolated to the Kent and Medway region. In April 2025, a review found that the networking infrastructure used by the UK's Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust was putting digital clinical systems at risk.

Other notable IT issues impacting healthcare in the UK include a 2024 incident, when two hospitals in Nottingham were unable to deliver pathology services after an IT failure, the exact cause of which was not shared.

Earlier that year, two hospitals in Sussex suffered outages caused by a power failure in their IT room, which temporarily shut down all IT systems.

In 2023, London-based Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust suffered a significant outage during a summer heatwave, leaving doctors unable to access patient medical records and ultimately costing the NHS around £1.4m ($1.7m).