Thirty Years Inside the Machine

An Introduction

The outside claims this piece leans on, and where they come from. Each note says what the source looked at, so you can judge how far it stretches.

BBC BASIC was an early-1980s language that ran on the BBC Micro and was later ported to PCs, Real32 and Novell environments
R.T. Russell, 'Happy Birthday BBC BASIC!' (bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcbasic/birthday/) – author of the Z80 and MS-DOS ports. Not fetched directly. (1981)
Reference history of BBC BASIC: 1981 release on the BBC Micro and later ports to MS-DOS, CP/M and Windows.
M-Tec Computer Solutions, through takeovers, became Torex Health and subsequently iSOFT
Office of Fair Trading, Completed acquisition by iSOFT Group plc of Torex plc: completed 23 Dec 2003; Torex entered the GP sector in 1997 and acquired several GP suppliers. (1997–2003)
UK competition regulator decision on iSOFT's 2003 purchase of Torex; covers Torex's corporate history, not individual GP software firms.
The GP IT market has been dominated by the same two or three platforms for a long time
NHS England press release, 26 June 2025: GP practices 'have largely had a choice of just two suppliers'; Medicus the first new core GP IT system for 25 years.
NHS England announcement (June 2025) on the first new GP clinical system supplier in 25 years; CMA 2023 market share for EMIS.
The GP record is one of the most remarkable longitudinal datasets in the world
Herrett E et al., 'Data Resource Profile: Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)', Int J Epidemiol 2015;44(3):827–36.
2015 profile of the CPRD research database: 11.3m patients from 674 UK practices as of July 2013.