What We Know About Nottingham Hospital's Maternity Data Loss

A misconfigured IT script erased 11 years of access logs for maternity records at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH), leaving officials unable to confirm who viewed thousands of patient files between September 2011 and November 2022, Ars Technica reported, citing a trust blog post published Monday.

The underlying patient care records survived. The record of who read them did not.

What Happened to the Maternity Records?

The error occurred August 18 during routine technical work, according to the NUH blog post cited by Ars Technica. IT staff were creating a copy of a radiotherapy database for reporting purposes and used a set of pre-written computer instructions previously applied to a different hospital system. A setting that should have been changed before running the process was missed. Instead of copying the radiotherapy database, the process ran against a maternity database and overwrote it, the trust said.

The overwritten database held records for women and babies who received care from NUH between September 2011 and November 2022.

What Data Was Lost — and What Was Recovered?

NUH said it escalated the problem "within minutes of being identified" and worked with external specialists to recover as much data as possible. Patient care information — notes, observations, test results, and other records tied to a person's care — was restored, according to the trust.

The access history was not. "We have not been able to restore the complete history showing who viewed maternity records during this period," the blog post said, per Ars Technica. "As a result, in most cases, we may be unable to confirm whether a maternity record was viewed by a particular person between September 2011 and November 2022."

Why Does the Missing History Matter for Patients?

Without the access logs, the trust cannot verify whether any specific maternity record was viewed appropriately, inappropriately, or at all during the 11-year window. NUH said the incident does not affect current patient care and stated that "no patient information was accessed or used inappropriately as a result of this incident." That assurance rests on the trust's other checks rather than the erased log itself, since the log that would normally confirm or rule out improper access is the data that was lost.

How Is Nottingham University Hospitals Responding?

Andy Callow, NUH's chief digital and information officer, said the trust completed a patient safety incident investigation and has taken steps to strengthen "technical controls and processes to help prevent a similar incident from happening again," according to the blog post cited by Ars Technica. Callow apologized in a statement: "I am sorry for the concern and distress this incident may cause to women and families affected."

The trust did not detail the specific technical safeguards added, beyond describing them as strengthened controls and processes.

What Else Is Nottingham University Hospitals Facing?

The data-loss disclosure lands amid a separate police investigation into NUH's maternity department. A review released in June and led by a senior midwife found that more than 500 mothers and babies suffered "potentially avoidable" harm or died due to systemic failings at the trust, Ars Technica reported, citing BBC coverage of that review. Cited failings included understaffing, undertrained staff, and failure to listen to parental concerns.

Key Figures From the Incident

• 11 years of maternity record access history erased — September 2011 to November 2022.
• August 18, 2026 — the date the IT error occurred, per the NUH blog post.
• 500+ mothers and babies cited in a separate June review as having suffered potentially avoidable harm or death tied to maternity department failings, according to BBC reporting referenced by Ars Technica.
• 0 instances of confirmed inappropriate access reported by NUH, though the trust cannot verify most access during the affected period because the log itself was destroyed.

NUH has not said how many individual maternity records or patients fall within the 2011–2022 window covered by the lost database, and the trust's public statement does not specify what recovery methods it attempted before concluding the access history could not be restored.

The full trust statement, along with Callow's remarks, was published in the blog post described in Ars Technica's report, which also noted the disclosure was first spotted by The Register.