Five of the UK’s biggest NHS trusts – including Manchester University, Guy’s and St Thomas’, Newcastle Hospitals, Mid and South Essex and Barts Health – alongside NHS England reported 274,620 IT incidents throughout 2025, according to new Freedom of Information (FOI) data analysed by Dynatrace, the leading AI-powered observability platform. This drove widespread disruption to patient care, from cancelled operations to missed routine appointments. However, gaps in how IT incidents are being recorded by individual trusts mean that the true scale of disruption is likely far greater. 

The findings show that IT outages are not isolated events but a recurring challenge across the NHS, including during major global incidents. On 3 June 2024, during the Synnovis ransomware attack, the five largest trusts in the UK reported 14,287 operations and appointments were cancelled or moved in a single day. Similar patterns were seen during the other large IT incidents throughout 2024 and 2025 including on 19 July 2024, when 12,528 patient interactions were disrupted across all five trusts, and on 20 October 2025, which led to 8,527 disruptions across four of the five trusts; highlighting how both internal and external factors can disrupt frontline health services. 

In addition to the tens of thousands of patient interactions that were disrupted during the three largest IT incidents between 2024 and 2025, the FOI data also reveals the majority of cancellations and postponements were linked to appointments rather than operations. Insights from three of the five trusts found that on average, appointments accounted for 95% of total patient disruptions, revealing the sheer impact on routine care.  

“The data clearly shows that NHS IT outages are a widespread issue, which aren’t confined to individual trusts or one-off events. Outages are occurring across multiple regions at scale with thousands of patient interactions affected on a single day – and not just the operations that are already being widely reported on. With digital disruption now a system-wide challenge, IT outages can no longer be regarded as simply a technical issue – they have a direct and measurable impact on patients’ ability to access care when and where they need it,” said Paula Lender-Swain, Regional Director, Public Sector UK at Dynatrace. “When systems go down, it’s routine services like appointments that are most affected, which not only has a direct impact to NHS wait lists but also threatens early diagnosis and preventative treatment.” 

The FOI data additionally highlights the inconsistency in how IT incidents are being logged by individual trusts, meaning the true scale of digital disruption is unknown. Some trusts said they do not hold data linking IT incidents to impacts on patient care, while others were unable to provide information on incident duration or even total incident volumes for 2025. 

“Without consistent, centralised reporting, there’s no joined-up picture of how IT outages are affecting patient care and valuable clinician time, making it harder to identify patterns, address root causes and truly understand the impact on services,” continues Lender-Swain.  

“As the NHS looks to deliver on its ambition to become one of the most AI-enabled healthcare systems in the world, it must first address these foundational gaps in visibility and resilience. Without a clear, real-time understanding of system performance and patient impact, organisations risk operating with blind spots. By strengthening observability and unifying data across systems, the NHS can move from reacting to incidents to proactively managing them – reducing disruption, supporting staff and ensuring infrastructure is ready for the next phase of digital healthcare.”