Danish digital ID outage disrupts pharmacies on busy pre-Easter day

A nationwide outage of Denmark’s MitID digital identification system on Wednesday caused significant disruptions at pharmacies, leaving staff unable to access prescription records during one of the busiest periods before Easter, according to public broadcaster DR.

Pharmacy employees rely on MitID to log into FMK-online, the shared national system for electronic prescriptions. Without access, staff could not process orders for prescription medication, said Merete Wagner Hoffmann, press officer for the Danish Pharmacy Association.

“Around half of the employees who normally log in had managed to do so before the outage,” Hoffmann told DR. Those already logged in could continue serving customers, but unlogged staff were unable to assist with prescription requests.

The disruption coincided with a peak in pharmacy visits, as many Danes stock up on medication ahead of the Easter holidays. “The days before Easter are extremely busy—many pharmacies bring in extra staff because they know there’s huge demand,” Hoffmann added.

MitID, co-owned by the Danish Agency for Digitisation and the banking association Finans Danmark, was down for approximately 4.5 hours, from 9:00 AM to 1:30 PM. Authorities attributed the failure to an “internal error” rather than an external attack.

The agency apologised for the inconvenience, while Hoffmann acknowledged that while most pharmacies likely found workarounds, the outage caused “some frustration” across the sector.