Professor Robert Landers:

As a pathologist, I diagnose cancer biopsies and look at cancer resection specimens. The cyberattack has had a devastating impact. It brought us to a standstill. Everything we do is IT dependent and IT driven, which meant that we had to stop. Our laboratories went from processing 150 tissue samples a day down to three, four or five tissue samples a day. With those that we are processing, the risk of a mistake is red hot. Many of our IT systems are installed to help us prevent mistakes, but these are missing.

It is like driving a car without a safety belt or airbags. It will take months, not weeks, to recover. Patients will have operations and their diagnoses delayed and there is a risk that the diagnosis would be wrong. I am sorry to say that but it is a fact. We just do not have the safety systems in place to deliver safe diagnoses at the moment. This has had a worse impact on diagnostic services than Covid-19.