London Ambulance Service's computer crashes

IT problems at capital's ambulance service leaves 999 staff using pen and paper

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) has said that a computer crash on 8 June forced staff to revert to pen and paper to record calls from the public.

The problem arose because of technical issues implementing a new emergency computer system.

An LAS spokeswoman said: "In the interim we used our manual system for managing 999 calls, which involved recording calls on paper and passing information to ambulance crews over the radio.

"At all times during this process our priority was to answer all incoming 999 calls, and get an appropriate response to those patients with the most serious illnesses and injuries."

The LAS said it had reverted to its original call-taking computer system until the new one is up and running. It will be carrying out a full review into the issues with the introduction of the new system.

A computer crash in 2008 led to LAS control room staff having to manually record data and relay information to emergency crews over the radio system. An isolated hardware problem was said to have caused the problem.

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