ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

A patient died during a London Ambulance Service computer crash over the New Year.

A probe has been launched into whether the technical difficulties in the control room – which forced staff to log calls by hand for nearly five hours – led to the patient’s death.

The ambulance service has apologised to anyone who experienced delays to response times during the computer glitch.

Director of operations at London Ambulance Service, Paul Woodrow, said: "We are taking this incident very seriously and have now launched a full external investigation into the circumstances of what happened and any impact on our patients."

The service said the system is now stable and that they are carrying out on-going checks and monitoring while the investigation takes place.

Mr Woodrow said their control room staff are "fully trained and practised in using a manual back-up system", and continued to prioritise patients in the same way, using the same assessment process as usual.

He added: "It would not be right for us to predict the outcome of this investigation until it is complete but we will be open about the findings of the report following the investigation.

"As part of our investigation we have identified a patient who sadly died during the time of the computer issues where we would like to look more closely at whether this was potentially a contributory factor. We have launched a separate investigation to establish this.

"It is too early to say what the cause of this patient's death was but we will report on the findings when the investigation is complete.

"We would like to encourage anyone with any concerns to contact us. We will also be speaking to our own staff to listen to their experiences."

The service's Patient Experience department can be contacted by calling 020 3069 0362 or by emailing patient.experiences@londonambulance.nhs.uk