Fergie's Tech Blog

iPods Bring Down Hospital Servers

Via Watch Your End.

iPods and MP3 players aren’t just a security risk, it appears. British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, has revealed that a leading UK hospital lost its servers for two days thanks to staff downloading huge quantities of songs and movies from the internet for use on their MP3 players. Journalists found that servers at the Queen Mother Hospital in Kent were out of action for 48 hours while storage space intended for X-rays and patient records was crammed full of multimedia files.

After the main server crashed the hospital went on a go-slow and X-rays had to be processed using film while patient notes were pulled out of hand-written back-up files. Managers at the hospital — which had to close a ward last month because of a £35 million ($65 million) hole in finances — admitted the computer misuse had been costly.

posted by Fergie @ 5/04/2006 03:15:00 PM