70 London 999 calls lost due to clock-change IT glitch
Emergency calls lost in British Summer Time balls-up last year
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
The London Ambulance Service trust has confirmed that more than 70 emergency calls were not visible to staff due to a technical fault caused by a switch from British Summer Time last year.
A control room IT glitch led to the loss of the calls in October last year, the service said.
According to an article in the Health Service Journal, a technical review found that the service's call-handling system had not been correctly set up after the clock change from British Summer Time last year. As a result, a number of emergency calls did not to appear on a screen in the control room.
A spokesman for the trust told Guardian Government Computing: "On 30 October 2011, a technical issue developed in our control room where some 999 calls were not visible on a small number of the computer screens.
"The issue was immediately identified by staff, and after 25 minutes was resolved by our technical team, who were able to account for all the 999 calls in the system."
A clinical review of the calls that hadn't been visible found that no patients were in life-threatening condition, according to the spokesman, but a few may have benefited from either an earlier response or a ring back to make further assessment.
In June 2011, the London Ambulance Service experienced difficulties with the implementation of new CommandPoint software from Northrop Grumman. The installation led to major delays, with the trust initially having to revert to using its previous call-taking software until the issues were fixed.
This article was originally published at Guardian Government Computing.
Guardian Government Computing is a business division of Guardian Professional, and covers the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.
COMMENTS
And that is why...
The safety-critical systems I worked with ran everything on GMT. The local time was simply translated to and from GMT when required.
There really is no excuse for this sort of thing.
Re: Re: Eventually ...
No, they have exactly the same amount of daylight in winter. Playing with the clock just means that it begins and ends at different times.
Re: Eventually ...
We should be the first country to use UTC permanently. It would be a minimal disruption for us, and might lead the way to every country using it and the abolition of time zones.
But the obstacle is convincing people that 9am doesn't need to be the time to start work every single day of the year. And it really shouldn't be that difficult. Imagine you work 9-5 every day. Then your boss says "From next week, we need you to start at 8, and finish at 4." What would you do? Set your alarm an hour earlier. Everyone would be able to cope with this a lot easier than the current system of turning every clock in the place forward or back (and missing one, or going the wrong way, or forgetting entirely) and which could be staggered by individual companies, schools, etc.
Benefits include less of a peak during rush-hour traffic, no need for clock reconfiguration twice a year, and finally ending the debate over "putting the clocks back makes it dark on the school run. So start school later in the day, you damn idiot!"
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