On July 19, Penn Medicine experienced a major disruption when a global IT outage from CrowdStrike affected 50,000 of their computers, leaving staff unable to use electronic medical records and greeted with the "blue screen of death." Executives, awakened by early morning calls, held an emergency Zoom meeting to manage the crisis, which led to the cancellation of most nonessential procedures and a switch to paper records for documentation. Critical imaging machines remained operational on a different system. Penn Medicine is extending clinic hours and considering a shift to iOS devices to mitigate future disruptions.
