NCR road show may be too late

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 24

NCR road show may be too late

NCR, in a last-minute effort to publicise its hospital computer system offerings before the Government decides on new equipment for the Department of Health, has been touring the South Island showing its hardware and software. Two Wellington NCR staff members, Mr Rod Smith and Mr Ron Kleingeld, visited four hospital boards in a rental van modified to carry NCR’s latest medium-size computer, the NCR 9300. NCR is offering a range of application software packages to the Department of Health and to hospital boards. Most of the software is from Canada, which has a similar subsidised medicine structure to New Zealand’s, according to Mr Smith. One package comes from Britain. The software will run on a range of NCR computers. The 9300 computer is proposed as the solution for larger hospitals or hospital boards. In the van the men had

bolted a disc unit, containing 81 megabytes of fixed and removable disc storage, to the floor. For each demonstration they carried the 9300 central processing unit and a number of terminals into the building where the demonstration was held. The 9300 box, containing a 32-bit processor and two megabytes of memory, is a small desk-top unit. It will support up to 120 terminals. Mr Smith believes the New Zealand hospitals are “to some extent lagging behind in data processing.” “We are trying to get some support from hospital boards for the Health Department tender, but also, independently, quite a few boards are looking at computer systems,” Mr Smith says. NCR may be too late with its road show to have any effect on the Government’s decision. Mr Ivan Shipp, director of data processing for the Health Department, told “The Press” on Friday that a decision was “iminent”