A worldwide IT outage is affecting GP appointments across England.

GP surgeries have reported problems related to EMIS Web, which they use to manage bookings, conduct consultations and manage patient records.

Many appointments are unable to take place with some GPs only seeing seriously ill patients and handwriting prescriptions.

The outage is also reported to have affected IT service desk; transport booking systems; radiology reporting; rostering systems and the NHS app.

The outage is also affecting flights, shipping, railways and Sky News.

It is believed the source of the problem is an update being made to Crowdstrike cyber security software. 

A spokesperson for the UK's National Pharmacy Association said: "We're aware that due to global IT outages that services in community pharmacies, including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries, are disrupted today.

"We urge patients to be patient whilst visiting their pharmacy."

An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.

“The NHS has long standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.

“There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they usually would.

“Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise. Only contact your GP if it’s urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111″.

George Kurtz, the CEO of Crowdstrike said :"Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.

"We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.

"We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels.

"Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers."