A mother has sued an Alabama hospital claiming that her newborn baby daughter died because the hospital was dealing with a ransomware attack on its computer systems and therefore didn’t provide optimum care during her birth, the Wall Street Journal reports.  The suit is believed to be the first of its kind linking a ransomware attack at a hospital to an individual’s death.

Teiranni Kidd went to the Springhill Medical Center on July 16, 2019 to deliver her baby, but unbeknownst to her, the hospital was dealing with a significant cyber attack that prevented staff from sharing medical reports and monitoring patients’ conditions.  Information provided in the lawsuit says hospital personnel were overwhelmed with the work needed to keep track of patients, tests and even other hospital workers as information needed to be printed and physically delivered to various locations around the facility.

Kidd’s daughter, Nicko Silar, was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, cutting off oxygen to her brain; the baby died nine months later due to complications of the delivery.  Kidd’s lawsuit alleges the hospital was unable to provide adequate care, such as monitoring the baby’s oxygen levels, because of the crippling ransomware attack.

In text messages, doctors and nurses complained that they could not monitor patients in real-time using sensors and other technology that could be seen at the nursing station; nurses had to individually get vital stats and report them back to a central point, where they were transcribed onto a patient record.

In Nicko’s case, this meant that the doctor in the delivery room, Katelyn Parnell, wasn’t able to see fetal information on the monitors that would’ve alerted her to the baby’s health being in danger.  She later texted a nurse manager that she would have delivered the baby by caesarean section if she would’ve been aware of the vital signs.  “I need u to help me understand why I was not notified.” In another text, Dr. Parnell wrote: “This was preventable.”