Coming hot on the heels of our poll from last week that asked whether the very large sums being spent on digitising our hospitals were justified – close to 60 per cent of you said yes – came the news late last week that InterSystems had snaffled the huge contract to roll out its technology for the Northern Territory's public health system.

We always had our money on InterSystems, a relative quiet achiever that has seen real progress with its TrakCare suite, which it markets outside of the US. Trak has had a few other high-profile wins in our part of the world, including for the new hospital at Bendigo and the replacement of a number of best-of-breed systems at Macquarie University Hospital in Sydney a couple of years ago, but this implementation will be watched more keenly than most.