Internet surfing delinked at all public healthcare institutions; cashless payments unavailable

Photo: Jui-Yong Sim / Flickr
Photo: Jui-Yong Sim / Flickr

The country’s Smart Nation initiative took a stumble in recent days, what with all the spate of cybercrime involving the public healthcare system and iTunes fraud.

Last Thursday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) initiated a temporary measure of blocking all staff computers at SingHealth institutions from accessing the internet. The delinking of the internet was completed in the medical institutions under the National Healthcare Group and the National University Health System yesterday, resulting in the unavailability of IT system connections that require the internet.

One disruption faced by patients now is the inability to pay the fees of medical treatment and medicine through credits cards and NETS. An image posted on Reddit showed a notice put up at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital stating that cash payment is preferred now that the internet has been delinked. Cashless payments aren’t available at Yishun Community Hospital and Admiralty Medical Centre either.

Photo: u/Dagachi_One via Reddit

Of course, you don’t have to pay immediately at the medical institutions — patients can settle their bills through other means. Folks who still have faith in using the internet for SingHealth services can pay by Zoom, AXS machines or on hospital websites.

Other disruptions include longer waits for consultations, retrievals of test results, as well as delays in checking MediSave accounts or making claims.

Inconvenient? Definitely. But perhaps necessary after 1.5 million SingHealth patients had their data compromised in Singapore’s largest cyber attack so far. The IT systems of SingHealth — comprising hospitals, national specialty centers, and polyclinics — was hit by a malicious attack on July 4, but it was only revealed to the public last Friday, on July 20.

The data stolen included names, NRIC numbers, addresses, genders, ethnicities, and dates of birth of 1.5 million patients who visited SingHealth’s specialist outpatient clinics and polyclinics from May 1 2015 to the day of the breach. Out of these, 160,000 patients in the system had records of dispensed medicines extracted.



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