Alberta Health Services is starting to get back on track after the Shaw electrical fire Wednesday which crashed the provincial networks.

Slowly systems with the highest clinical priority will be brought back online to be checked and assessed before the full network is up and running.

AHS officials hope to have the network restarted and reconciled before the end of the weekend, but a lot of work is ahead of them.

Data on the server needs to be recovered, validated, and backed-up before the restart can happen.

Which systems will be brought back online first is determined by the patient flow, according to Bill Trafford, Calgary’s Chief Development Officer with AHS.

Once the systems come back online there may be a delay as AHS works through the backlog of appointments and scheduling, which is starting to pile up.

Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer for Calgary Francoise Belanger says, it could take several weeks to re-book all surgeries which were planned for the last couple days.

110 scheduled elective surgeries and 298 non-emergency same-day procedures have been re-booked, which isn’t even half of the planned surgeries for the day.

Calgary Laboratory Services is also operating as usual but continues to prioritize testing based on patient urgency and non-emergency appointments will be rescheduled by the end of the weekend.

The leader of the Liberal Party and an emergency room doctor, Raj Sherman, joined media at the AHS update and says Alberta tax payers will end up paying the cost.

“We must ensure that with a system that is so integrated that when something happens here, the whole provincial does not go down. Let’s protect the integrity of our data and each day it should be backed up,” he said.  “I hope there is some important lessons to be learned from this.”

Sherman adds it’s a major issue when doctors can’t access patient information and it affects patient care.

Meanwhile, the province is still working to restore all of its registry services, disrupted by Wednesday’s fire.

Service Alberta Minister Manmeet Bhullar says they’re making some exceptions in the meantime.

“For example, myself and the minister of transportation are trying to see if there’s a way to extend driver license’s for people during this period of time.”

If you want to go fishing this weekend, you won’t need a license, because that service was down.

There’s also some exceptions for time sensitive land transactions.

Many services are now back online, including court information and high school transcript processing.