Synnovis is diagnostics and pathology service which operates as a partnership between the hospitals and German company Synlab.

A critical incident was declared at some London hospitals after the provider was targeted by Qilin on 3 June 2024, with blood transfusion services severely disrupted, operations cancelled and emergency patients diverted elsewhere.

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, one of two trusts heavily impacted, confirmed a year after the hack that one patient had also "died unexpectedly".

A spokesperson for the trust said a number of contributing factors led to the patient's death including "a long wait for a blood test result".

"The patient safety incident investigation identified a number of contributing factors that led to the patient's death," they said at the time.

A similar attack in 2020 by a different hacker group on a hospital in Düsseldorf in Germany led to a negligent homicide investigation being opened after an elderly patient died.

It was later dropped after medical experts concluded the patient's condition was so severe that they would have died regardless of the issues caused by the cyber-attack.

Prosecutors could also not definitively prove that it was the direct cause of death.

In total, the Synnovis hack in 2024 disrupted more than 10,000 appointments and caused weeks of disruption.

The hackers also threatened to publish the data on their dark net website unless Synnovis paid a ransom.