NHS IT spending gets £151 m boost in wake of WannaCry attack

NHS IT spending gets £151 m boost in wake of WannaCry attack

NHS Trusts have spent a combined additional £151,940,223 on IT since being hit by the WannaCry attack in May 2017 according to official figures obtained via the Freedom of Information (FOI) by the Parliament Street think tank.


The global WannaCry ransomware attack particularly hit unpatched Windows XP machines, infecting and encrypting computers of around 200,000 known victims, including NHS trusts across England who faced a £73 million IT bill, and some £19 million of lost patient services.


65 NHS Trusts have spent £612,128,793 on IT in the 2018/19 financial year compared to £494,607,408 in the 2017/18 financial year, and £460,188,570 in the 2016/17 financial year directly preceding the WannaCry Attack. 


While some would criticise the NHS spending priorities prior to the attack, it can be argued that the NHS simply did not have the money to upgrade its systems and ensure they are patched with all the latest security updates, and instead chose to spend it on frontline staff and healthcare. Particularly given that it was reported that in the year prior to the attack a billion pounds of infrastructure spend -  part of which is spent on the NHS' IT infrastructure - had been removed from its budget to plug wider funding gaps in the NHS. Figures reported by HSJ in May 2017 also found that at that time a further £3 billion was set to be moved to help fill funding gaps elsewhere in the NHS.

Others blamed the vendor industry with one Linked in comment quoted by HSJ  saying: "Had the software vendors not charged over the odds for the ..

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