Defining key pharmacist and technician roles in response to a hospital downtime or cyberattack

Abstract

The occurrence of ransomware, or "cyberattacks," on hospital institutions has steadily increased in recent years. Pharmacy departments that rely on automation and software applications are greatly affected when those systems are offline. Pharmacy workflow without automation can be manually intensive and unsafe for patients. More challenges may be present if the hospital pharmacy is not prepared for a cyberattack or does not have standardized downtime procedures for such an event. This article describes a specific event that took place at a 350-bed acute care hospital located in the United States during the summer of 2021. The hospital lost access to the electronic health record, admitting and registration system, financial systems, pharmacy information systems, barcode medication administration systems, server for the automated dispensing cabinets or inventory management applications, diversion software, compliance applications, and all clinical decision support tools. The goal is to describe a standardized downtime procedure for medication management by identifying specific pharmacist and technician roles when automated processes are offline.