A specialist investigation at a large healthcare organisation after the discovery of “suspicious activity” on its IT system has found no evidence patient data was breached.

The computers at Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) were disconnected last Monday (December 2) to protect the data of thousands of patients and staff.

An investigation was quickly launched by NHS England following the discovery during routine monitoring, and has now been completed.

In an update published on the MCH website today (December 13), a spokesperson confirmed there has been “no evidence of unauthorised access to patient data”.

The statement read: “Firstly, we want to thank our patients for their understanding and support as we have worked through our ongoing IT incident.

“Our staff have worked hard to maintain our services, and to provide care to our communities. We appreciate that the IT outage has resulted in delays and some disruption over the past week, and want to thank everyone involved.

“Our focus has understandably been on continued safe and effective care, while NHS England oversaw a thorough and in-depth specialist investigation.

“There has been no evidence of unauthorised access to patient data…”

“This investigation has taken some time but we are pleased that following deep-dive research, there has been no evidence of unauthorised access to patient data.

“As a result, we are now gradually and carefully reconnecting some of our priority patient systems, meaning that you should begin to see things return to normal.

“This will not be immediate and will not apply to all systems at present, so please bear with us as we adjust and reset.”

This means patients attending a blood test at MCH clinics across the Towns should continue to bring with them a paper form.

Booked appointments are still due to go ahead as planned, however, if a booked home visit has not happened, patients are asked to call 0300 123 3444.

MCH is based at Gillingham Business Park and runs 31 clinics across Medway including in Hoo, Rainham and Lordswood.

It employs more than 1,300 health workers and treats 10,000 patients each month.

Established in 2011, it is funded by the NHS and local authorities.