A History of Healthcare Computing and Advances in Clinical Information Productivity in Southampton, 1980 -2024: Essay 2: Evolution of the University Hospital Southampton Clinical data Estate from 1990 to 2001
A History of Healthcare Computing and Advances in Clinical Information Productivity in Southampton, 1980 -2024: Essay 2: Evolution of the University Hospital Southampton Clinical data Estate from 1990 to 2001
This essay is the second of a series which report the unique history of the Clinical Digital Estate (CDE) of University Hospital Southampton (UHS) from its origins in the 1980s to the current day.
This knowledge of the early phases of the project largely survives in the recollections of those who built the system, as I have seen very little formal documentation from this era in terms of correspondence, emails or policy documents.
I am therefore most grateful to key individuals in the project whose recollections and substantial contributions to the programme date back to the 1990s. Liz Horkin, who was the first Director of Information Management at UHS, generously provided a long written recollection of her leadership of the early years of the programme. Alan Hales, Adrian Byrne and David Cable kindly gave their time in interviews, and Ian Brewer provided further written testimony.
Alan was the technical architect of many of the key features in the modern UHS clinical data estate. Adrian, David and Ian have had long and dedicated careers at senior level in the Trust IT management team.
In the course of the conversations and within the documents, references were made to many legacy computer systems which were unfamiliar to me and will be little known to others. In order to make sense of the text, I have amplified these references with such additional description as I have been able to track down from public sources on the internet.
In the first essay, I considered the impact of the ambitious and premature experiment in health systems computerisation in Winchester, which had collapsed in the late 1980s with considerable national political opprobrium and at huge expense before Southampton was drawn into it. In this essay, I have collated the story of the first decade of conceptualisation and development of the modern Southampton Clinical Data Estate and its key components between 1990 and 2001.
Healthcare computing, History of Computing, National Programme for IT (NPfIT), Wessex Regional Health Authority, Regional Information Systems Plan, Resource Management, Casemix, Hospital Integrated Clinical Support System, HICSS, Trust Integration Engine
University of Southampton
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
19 March 2026
Rew, David
36dcc3ad-2379-4b61-a468-5c623d796887
Rew, David
(2026)
A History of Healthcare Computing and Advances in Clinical Information Productivity in Southampton, 1980 -2024: Essay 2: Evolution of the University Hospital Southampton Clinical data Estate from 1990 to 2001
(Principia Medicinae Digitalis Sotoniensis)
University of Southampton
41pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
This essay is the second of a series which report the unique history of the Clinical Digital Estate (CDE) of University Hospital Southampton (UHS) from its origins in the 1980s to the current day.
This knowledge of the early phases of the project largely survives in the recollections of those who built the system, as I have seen very little formal documentation from this era in terms of correspondence, emails or policy documents.
I am therefore most grateful to key individuals in the project whose recollections and substantial contributions to the programme date back to the 1990s. Liz Horkin, who was the first Director of Information Management at UHS, generously provided a long written recollection of her leadership of the early years of the programme. Alan Hales, Adrian Byrne and David Cable kindly gave their time in interviews, and Ian Brewer provided further written testimony.
Alan was the technical architect of many of the key features in the modern UHS clinical data estate. Adrian, David and Ian have had long and dedicated careers at senior level in the Trust IT management team.
In the course of the conversations and within the documents, references were made to many legacy computer systems which were unfamiliar to me and will be little known to others. In order to make sense of the text, I have amplified these references with such additional description as I have been able to track down from public sources on the internet.
In the first essay, I considered the impact of the ambitious and premature experiment in health systems computerisation in Winchester, which had collapsed in the late 1980s with considerable national political opprobrium and at huge expense before Southampton was drawn into it. In this essay, I have collated the story of the first decade of conceptualisation and development of the modern Southampton Clinical Data Estate and its key components between 1990 and 2001.
Text
Essay 2 DRew UHS Digital History 1990 to 2000 19.03.2026
- Author's Original
More information
Published date: 19 March 2026
Additional Information:
David Anthony Rew MA MChir (Cambridge) FRCS (London)
Consultant General Surgeon, Southampton Hospitals
Clinical Informatics Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Southampton
Keywords:
Healthcare computing, History of Computing, National Programme for IT (NPfIT), Wessex Regional Health Authority, Regional Information Systems Plan, Resource Management, Casemix, Hospital Integrated Clinical Support System, HICSS, Trust Integration Engine
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Local EPrints ID: 510191
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/510191
PURE UUID: 979a361b-aeda-4bb4-83de-dba86d444897
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Date deposited: 19 Mar 2026 17:50
Last modified: 21 Mar 2026 03:16
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