"Error 404" is the message that appeared on several occasions this Wednesday between 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. when pharmacists tried to connect to the SIDEP platform.
The latter allows pharmacies that perform tests to enter the results and send them to their customers.
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If these dysfunctions, intermittently, were resolved quickly, their occurrences too close annoy pharmacists. This is not the first time that the IT tool is in difficulty as was the case on the eve of the weekend of August 15 or December 24 for example.
"We can imagine that it is impossible to avoid bugs, but it happens too frequently"
, regrets Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF).
"The system saturates because it is not calibrated to receive so many test results"
, analysis Gilles Bonnefond, spokesperson for the Union of trade unions of dispensing pharmacists.
And for good reason, for several days, the number of tests carried out continues to reach new records.
Over 7 million were carried out during Christmas week, two-thirds of which were antigens.
Peaks of activity
"The overloads are linked to too large seizures over a very short period of time, often linked to unauthorized robots or attempted denial of service
attacks (computer attack aimed at rendering a service unavailable)
"
, explains the Management general health.
Slowdowns that can last between 5 minutes and two hours.
According to her, it is not the capacity of SIDEP which is responsible - the platform can withstand 3 million tests entered per day -
"but the concentration on a given range which causes incidents"
.
Indeed, it is at the end of the day that all the biology laboratories that analyze the PCR test samples enter their results in the SIDEP, causing activity peaks and therefore saturation.
In pharmacies, these slowdowns are not without consequences.
“It creates concern among our customers.
We can give them the result orally but not send them the SMS with the official confirmation.
We receive many calls, it saturates the telephone lines ”
, deplores Philippe Besset.
He also regrets that these bugs create an overload of work for professionals who must stay after closing to enter the results once the platform is accessible again.
Increased capacity
"We know that all the technicians are working to increase the capacity of SIDEP but we cannot afford, on days so intense in tests, vaccinations and with all the other activities of the pharmacy, to have a slowdown of the system"
, alerts Gilles Bonnefond who puts forward a solution:
"It would perhaps be necessary that the biology laboratories spread out the entry of their results over the day or do it after 7 pm, or then on a separate system to avoid these problems".
For its part, the DGS ensures that the capacity of SIDEP will be quadrupled, or 12 million tests that can be entered per day, to absorb peaks of activity.
"New machines are being installed and configured"
, she adds, without giving more details.