The story of its inception and on-going development since the original project in 1985.
TIARA is the result of Leicestershire Health Authority, then the largest in England and Wales, opening a new DGH at Glenfield in 1985. Penny Rundle was appointed to be Head of Physiotherapy and she asked for a patient centred computer system for her department. As nothing had been planned she was given permission to look at existing systems for something suitable. In order to judge suitability she decided to draw up a "shopping list" of features that were required.
To ensure that this was comprehensive she invited her District Physiotherapy colleagues and representatives of the other therapy professions from within Leicestershire to help with drawing up the list. Once this was complete, the shopping list was used to judge the systems they saw, and it soon became clear that there was nothing on the market at that time which remotely met the stated requirements. Rather than be put off by this finding, Penny and her colleagues enlisted the help of the Centre for Health Services Management at Leicester Polytechnic, where they met up with Reg Tattersall. As well as Reg's knowledge of the NHS he is also a computer expert so he offered to write a multi-user, multi-therapy system to meet the requirements of the shopping list which was duly agreed. Thus TIARA was born.
The name TIARA, standing for Therapy Information Administration Recording & Analysis, came later and according to both Penny and Reg creating the name took longer than developing the first version of the system!
CHRONOLOGY
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1985:
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First Version developed. |
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1985:
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TIARA Version 1 made available to other NHS bodies resulting in a number of sites adopting the system especially in Oxford Region. |
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1989:
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Leicestershire invest "income generation money" to enhance TIARA and change language it is written in to MUMPS. Ethitec chosen to do the re-write and provide ongoing support services. Ian Kemp, an LHA employee given responsibility for managing the IT side of the project. |
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1991:
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"Working for Patients" released advocates an internal market. Need for further changes to TIARA. |
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1992:
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TIARA re-written to meet "Open Systems" technology requirements and internal market information requirements also added. NHS in Scotland starts procurement for a Framework Arrangement to cover Therapy Management Information Systems. |
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1993:
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TIARA wins Scottish Framework Arrangement. Ian Kemp moves to promoting TIARA for the Authority full time. Number of sites using TIARA starts to take off. |
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1995:
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Changes to Health Authority remits forces LHA to sell TIARA. Ethitec chosen as the natural home of TIARA outside the NHS. Ian Kemp moves to Ethitec. |
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1996:
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NHS in Scotland extends Framework Arrangement for two more years. |
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1998:
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Number of sites continues to rise. Ethitec board commit to producing a graphical (Windows style) version. Support for existing character version assured. Pilot work interfacing to the Read codes undertaken. |
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1999:
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First site goes live with the new graphical version of TIARA. |
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2000:
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Official launch of Tiara9 at the Congress and Exhibition of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. |
Other
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