Ciaran Martin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the criminal group were "looking for money" by targeting the pathology services firm Synnovis.Hospitals declared a critical incident on Tuesday after the ransomware attack, which affected blood transfusions and test results.It also led to operations being cancelled and emergency patients being diverted elsewhere.
King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ - including the Royal Brompton and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital - and primary care services are among those affected.Mr Martin told the programme: "We believe it is a Russian group of cyber criminals who call themselves Qilin.
He told the BBC that the criminal group were "unlikely" to have known they would cause healthcare disruption when they organised the attack.He added: "There are two types of ransomware attack.
As of Wednesday evening, the NHS was reporting that disruption continued to affect services at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and primary care providers in south-east London.An NHS London spokesperson said: “All urgent and emergency services remain open as usual and the majority of outpatient services continue to operate as normal.“Unfortunately, some operations and procedures which rely more heavily on pathology services have been postponed, and blood testing is being prioritised for the most urgent cases, meaning some patients have had phlebotomy appointments cancelled.
One patient told BBC London that he was just moments from receiving a heart operation when the hospital cancelled the procedure due to the cyber attack.Oliver Dowson said the surgeon explained "there was an issue with the blood bank".He said: "When you've been sitting there since the crack of dawn in a smock waiting to have open-heart surgery, however calm I tried to feel, you still get a bit nervous.
The company says it currently processes about 100,000 blood tests a day and serves about two million patients.Synnovis said it was unable to comment further on the cyber attack.
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