In late 2017 I pestered Ned for info about the computer system I had been working with back in 1976. He replied with a great note about the whole history of IT at MHMH spanning 1976-2011.
It was a bit overwhelming. And I wasn't sure what to do with the info in the note because the calibre of Ned's professionalism clashed with the more low-key and personal tone of my blog.
1976 was a formative year for me and it ended with my having a devastating nervous breakdown. The subsequent 25 years of my life were governed completely by this experience. Two previous blog posts are devoted to Barry Willenbring, my roommate and workmate, in 1976.
Anyway, I love the info in the note, it's absolutely fascinating to me, and I really appreciate Ned taking the time to send it to me. I've edited out a couple small bits of non-essential info. Other than that, the text below is a vebatim and letter-perfect copy.
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MHMH had about 420 beds back in the late ‘70’s, including bassinets. It has roughly maintained that bed count over the last several decades but most of the beds now are classified as critical or intensive care, with a level 1 trauma center and a fleet of emergency transport helicopters. The medical center relocated to a newly built facility on a 300+ acre parcel between Hanover and Lebanon in 1991, a major undertaking as I’m sure you can imagine. All systems needed to be functional at both locations while the entire patient population was moved over a 24 hr period.
The company that developed the clinical laboratory software that we implemented was LCI out of Madison Wisconsin. They were one of the first clinical systems, the development of which was partially funded by federal grants.
We ran the entire laboratory on a stripped down DEC OS on a PDP 11/45, with 64K of core memory and 2 high speed fixed head 500 KB disk drives for swapping multi user sessions in and out of core. It also had two 1.2 MB removable disk cartridges for mass storage, and a magnetic tape device for backups. The application software was developed in Macro-11 and was remarkably efficient considering the number of simultaneous users, instrument interfaces and the size and limited capacity of the hardware configuration.
The system hardware that ran the LCI software was never upgraded. The hardware and software were replaced in 1984 with a VAX/ VMS system. The software was developed in MUMPS by a small software development company based in Massachusetts, named HIAS. We ran this system until 1994 when we converted to another VAX based system developed by the Cerner Corp out of Kansas City, Missouri. They were and still are one of the leading software vendors of clinical information system, including Laboratory, Radiology, Pharmacy, Cardiology, Electronic Medical Records, Outpatient visit management, Cancer Center, etc.
I was promoted out of the Laboratory in 1983 after completing a MS in Computer Science at Dartmouth. My first assignments were the automation of Pharmacy, Radiology, conversion from film based to digital imaging in Radiology and the development of an electronic medical record system for the medical center. We had a top notch development team and developed some great software, but due to budget and staff resource limitations and the speed with which the dynamic healthcare software environment was changing largely due to federal healthcare regulations, we were unable to compete with the big commercial development shops that supported 500 – 1000 software engineers. I retired at the end of 2011 after completing a major conversion of all clinical and administrative system (except the Laboratory (which remained on Cerner) to software developed by the EPIC Corporation, coincidentally out of Madison, WI.
I hope this answers some of your questions.
