At least 12 major hospitals, health systems affected by global IT outage

Hospitals and health systems across the United States were among the industries affected by the global IT outage on Friday morning.

The outages, which stalled internal and external systems on Microsoft-based computers, were caused by a faulty update from CrowdStrike -- an American cybersecurity technology firm that provides cloud workload protection, threat intelligence and cyberattack response services

CrowdStrike said the outage was not a due to a cyberattack but rather a software issue that had been identified. A fix has since been deployed, the company said.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued an urgent alert to hospitals and law enforcement reporting that "multiple government agencies" were impacted.

At least 12 hospitals or hospital systems across the U.S. were affected by the outage with some reporting that they had canceled elective procedures Friday.

Those affected include Cleveland Clinic, Cincinnati Children's, Kaleida Health/Cayuga in Buffalo, Harris Health System in Texas, Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, Martha's Vineyard Hospital, Mass General, Memorial Hermann in Texas, Mount Sinai in New York, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Mass General Brigham canceled all elective and non-emergency surgeries on Friday and issued an urgent message to employees about "a major digital incident … affecting all Mass General Brigham hospitals and sites."

Cincinnati Children's told ABC News that patients scheduled for surgery or radiology appointments should arrive at the scheduled time, but that they will likely face delays, advising families to plan accordingly.

All other non-surgical and office appointments before 10 a.m. ET were canceled.

"Many of our Microsoft-based computer systems have been affected by the worldwide technology outage," Cincinnati Children's said in a statement. "Our teams are working hard to minimize disruption to patient care and system operations, and we are bringing systems back up as quickly as possible."

Martha's Vineyard Hospital also said it was canceling non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical appointments for Friday.

Harris Health System in Texas said some services remained open but elective procedures scheduled for Friday had been canceled.

"Dialysis services remain open at Harris Health Quentin Mease Health Center," the system said in a post on X. "All other Harris Health outpatient clinic appointments and elective hospital procedures are being canceled today and will be rescheduled when the information systems issues are resolved."

The University of Kentucky (UK) said in a post on X that the campus, including Kentucky Hospital Systems, was experiencing "some disruptions" due to the outage.

Later Friday morning, UK information technology services said some systems had been restored but others were still continuing to face impacts.

Memorial Hermann in Texas reported computers were down for about two hours, causing "minor interruptions to some applications."

Pharmacy chains also saw some impacts. Rite Aid pharmacies told ABC News it's seen "minimal impact" and pharmacies are fully operational.

The outage also affected hospital systems abroad including at least two hospitals in Germany, more than a dozen hospitals in Israel, the NHS system in Wales and multiple hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, according to local reports.

ABC News' Ahmad Hemingway and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.