Last week’s prolonged Optus system outage caused widespread disruption to the delivery of healthcare services.

In some instances, this unprecedented network failure had the potential to result in adverse outcomes for patients who were unable to access the immediate or specialist medical care they needed.

Healthcare providers have reported that telehealth appointments were cancelled, on-call obstetricians and anaesthetists couldn’t be reached, and triple zero emergency call services were unavailable from landlines.

However, the impacts of these types of events could be far greater in the future as the delivery of healthcare increasingly moves online to make it more accessible to rural and regional communities.