New Delhi: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-Delhi’s server has been down since 7 am, affecting the healthcare center’s outpatient department (OPD) and sample collection services.

In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the hospital said: “Today the server for the National Informatics Centre’s eHospital being used at AIIMS New Delhi was down due to which outpatient and inpatient digital hospital services including smart lab, billing, report generation, appointment system etc, have been affected. All these services are running on manual mode currently.”

The OPD and sample collection were handled manually but the sample collection system for those who do not have a Unique Health Identification were affected, an AIIMS official was quoted as saying by PTI.

As each sample collected requires a barcode for tracking, the server going down has led to very few samples being collected, he added.

The hospital said that the server was down due to a possible ransomware attack.

“The National Informatics Centre (NIC) team working at AIIMS has informed that this may be a ransomware attack which is being reported to and will be investigated by appropriate law enforcement authorities,” it said.

Measures are being taken to restore the digital services and support is being sought from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and NIC, the statement said.

“AIIMS and NIC will take due precaution to prevent future such attacks. As of 7.30 pm, the hospital services are running on manual mode,” it added.