Power outages at Portuguese health data centre disrupt national prescriptions
Oct 2026Published 23 Oct 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor
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What happened
On 19 October 2026, a power outage at a data centre in northern Portugal operated by SPMS, the agency responsible for the Ministry of Health's shared technology systems, took several computer systems offline across the National Health Service (SNS). According to SPMS, there were two successive outages. The first was quickly resolved, but the second made the information systems unavailable. Problems began around 10am local time and were reported nationwide.
Staff at health centres and hospitals could not access patient records or issue electronic prescriptions as usual. Affected services included the National User Registry, the Electronic Medical Prescription system and access to the Electronic Health Record. Some patients experienced delays or could not receive scheduled care. SPMS reported that by 3pm technical teams had restored virtually all services, and the resolution was confirmed later that afternoon.
Contributing factors
The source does not state what caused the power outage at the data centre or why the second outage was not contained. SPMS says it expects new infrastructure by the end of 2026, funded through the Recovery and Resilience Plan, which will provide real-time redundancy for the main SNS systems, and it plans to overhaul the power architecture of the existing data centre. The National Federation of Physicians said on 23 October that constraints were still being reported in some local health units.
Lessons learned
- Critical data centres need power redundancy so that a second outage does not take down clinical systems.
- Recovery plans should be tested against successive or repeated power events, not only single failures.
- Public services that depend on central systems need downtime procedures for prescribing and record access, plus a clear communication route for staff and patients.
More lessons on outages, backup supply and restoration, worker safety and safe systems of work, from every incident on the register.
Source
Published 2026-10-23. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.
