[Loss of anesthesia records during network failure of anesthesia management information system: a case of malfunction of backup system].

We report a case of an accidental loss of anesthesia records through network failure of an anesthesia information management system (AIMS). The backup data were not kept in the anesthesia workstations or the server during the failure. Accordingly, anesthesia records of five patients were lost for one hour. Our AIMS has a network redundancy where the server keeps anesthesia monitoring data via two pathways: one via the monitoring server to the AIMS server and the other via anesthesia workstation to the server. Despite the redundant pathways, transient power failures of network switches caused interruptions in both pathways. Our case indicates that, to improve the robustness of the AIMS as electronic medical records, every network apparatus of AIMS, should be supplied with an uninterrupted power supply. Furthermore, each anesthesia workstation should function independently as an anesthesia record keeping client when network failure occurs.