A human error in the IT department at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) caused the loss of maternity records spanning 11 years. According to a blog post by NUH, discovered by The Register, the incident occurred on August 18. The problem arose during routine technical work when staff were creating a copy of a radiotherapy database for reporting purposes. The process involved using a set of pre-written computer instructions, or scripts, that had been used before in a different hospital system. However, a key setting that should have been changed before running the script was overlooked. As a result, the process was applied to the maternity database instead of the intended radiotherapy database, leading to the maternity records being overwritten. The affected database contained information about women and babies who received care at NUH from September 2011 to November 2022. According to the blog, NUH has been unable to fully recover some of the data, particularly the complete history of who accessed the maternity records during this time. As a result, in most cases, the hospital may not be able to confirm whether a specific maternity record was viewed by a particular person during that 11-year period. NUH stated that it immediately escalated the issue "within minutes of being identified" and worked with external specialists and reviewed other sources of information to recover as much data as possible. Despite the loss, the hospital was able to restore patient care-related data, including notes, observations, test results, and other information recorded as part of a person’s medical care. The incident highlights the risks associated with automated processes in healthcare IT systems, where a small oversight can lead to significant data loss. While NUH has taken steps to recover and mitigate the impact, the inability to fully restore access logs raises concerns about the long-term implications for data privacy and record-keeping in the NHS.