CCL (Clinical Computing Ltd) was the first company in the UK to develop and commercially exploit computing systems supporting clinical care in renal units.
CCL was established in 1979 by Mike Gordon and Conrad Venn, who had been colleagues together in the Department of Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital. There, under Professor Hugh de Wardener, they had introduced a computerised record system for the renal unit.
Mike Gordon (MG) became CCL’s managing director and Conrad Venn (CV) its core programmer.
Here is a timeline of CCL’s contribution to UK renal care as recalled by Conrad Venn.
| 1958 | Graduated from Cambridge (Physics) |
| 1958 | Worked at the first UK satellite ground station (Goonhilly) |
| 1963 | Graduated from London (Physics) |
| 1964 | Joined the electronics group at St Thomas’s Hospital where he developed an interest in computers |
| 1971 | Became a systems analyst at Charing Cross Hospital for one of the earliest PAS systems |
| 1973 | Joined the Department of Medicine as Lecturer in Computing, under Prof H E de Wardener, to develop a computerised record system for the hospital’s renal unit |
| 1976 | Enrolled as Computer Science undergraduate at Imperial College, London |
| Dec 1977 | Introduced to MG by Peter Throsby, Assistant Director of the Department of Computing & Control at Imperial College |
| Jul 1979 | Graduated from Imperial College |
| Dec 1977 | MG met CV to discuss the project and potential part-time work |
| Q1 1978 | CV joined team to work on the Charing Cross Medical School research project to ‘computerise’ the Hospital Renal Unit |
| Early 1979 | Meeting with Martin Knapp from Nottingham City Hospital Renal Unit (and others) to review the project and compare with other home-brew projects at various UK Renal Units. Conclusion was that the CX project was “substantially ahead of other prototypes” |
| Jun 1979 | Demonstrated the project at EDTA Conference in Amsterdam. Generated much interest from Nephrologists all over Europe. Returned with a list of 65 ‘very interested’ parties |
| Jul 1979 | Registered the company name ‘Clinical Computing Limited‘ |
| Apr 1980 | Re-developed as ‘Clinical Data System’ (CDS) on DEC PDP-11 computers |
| Mid 1980 | Installed the first system at Nottingham City Hospital |
| Late 1980 | Added first flexibility features to allow adaptation for individual client installations |
| 1981 | Installed systems at Liverpool Royal Infirmary & St James’s Hospital, Leeds |
| 1982 | Installed systems at Sheffield, Exeter, plus two others |
| 1983 | Installed at several UK sites and Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit |
| 1984 | Installed several UK sites and five systems at Mayo Clinic (Renal + 4 x Transplant) |
| 1980s | Extended to support 19 different specialties, including Diabetic, Maternity, Cardiac, Transplant, Organ Matching |
| Late 1980s | Used by the majority of UK Renal Units |
| 1988 | Re-developed for IBM PCs as ‘Proton’ |
| 1990 | Ported to VAX/VMS |
| 1991 | Ported to Unix, including HP-UX, IBM-AIX, Sun (and later Linux) |
| 1992 | Sold licences to National Medical Care (NMC) for (initially) 500+ centres in the US, eventually extended to approx. 2,000 centres. NMC was later acquired by Fresenius |
| Late 1990s | Used by Renal (and other specialty) Units across Europe, USA, Saudi, Australia & New Zealand |
| 1996-2000 | Re-developed for Windows as ‘Clinical Vision’ |
| 2017 | CCL acquired by Constellation Software, inc. |
First published June 2024
Last Updated on January 10, 2025 by neilturn