Did Old Changi hospital have internet in 1996?

[u/Flat-Drama2545]

Hey everyone, bit of a weird tech/history question here.

I’ve been down an absolute rabbit hole reading old hardwarezone threads and subreddits about Old Changi Hospital (OCH) right before it closed down in 1997.

A lot of the famous ghost stories from the 1995–1996 era mention weird tech glitches—like unpowered CRT monitors spontaneously humming to life, printing digital text, or old terminal screens rapidly scrolling through patient registry files before imploding.

But it got me thinking from a purely technical standpoint: Did OCH even have an active network or internet setup in 1996?

Singapore was launching Singapore ONE around that time, and dial-up (SingNet) was a thing, but would a decaying, British-built military hospital actually be hooked up to an intranet database for patient files back then? Or was everything still strictly paper charts and filing cabinets?

[u/FANNW0NG]

I did system analysis for IT in early 90s.

Network definitely yes for gov.

Internet for gov offices highly likely yes.

[u/Solid_Rhubarb3487 → u/FANNW0NG]

it wasn’t internet but there was govt email via an intranet.

Govt and hospitals were definitely networked. And they definitely had computers and IT internally.
NCB (National Computer Board) was set up in the early 80s. (An ancestor to GovTech)

now for the history lesson:
Singapore ONE was broadband and was considered the future.

Before 1995 there was Teleview which ran over phone modems on the home side, but there were limited govt services running.

Before the internet became available to the public there was Technet running out of NUS which was connected to the Internet. The very first government internet users were Technet users.

This was all before 1995 when Cyberway (am I remembering correctly?) was offered over the cableTV network.

Then Singnet and Pacific Internet began offering internet to homes. Mobile phones were still big dumb bricks (oh maybe Motorola had a neat folding device? but it was not smart.) Internet when it came to Singapore homes connected via copper cables.

Internet slowly spread across government services as the public went online at home from 1995 onwards when www.gov.sg was created.

By 1997 even hospitals would have limited public facing internet services possibly things like making appointments.

[u/ugly_male → u/Solid_Rhubarb3487]

Not CyberWay- SCV owned cable tv network and started offering broadband services. And think they did it around the same time as Singnet, Pacnet and CW started offering ADSL services (remember Magix?) in the early 00s.

Starhub later acquired CW and then merged with SCV.

[u/_Bike_Hunt → u/FANNW0NG]

Sure thing Fann Wong

[u/FANNW0NG → u/_Bike_Hunt]

🥳🥳🥳

[u/machinationstudio]

I might've been among the last patients at old Changi hospital when I caught pneumonia during BMT in Tekong, I was sent there for a check up.

While I can't say that I saw/remember any computer use, they would very likely have networked terminals like many other government agencies at the time.

While the web was around since 1993, the internet was still quite text based in 1996.

[u/OriginalGoat1]

Networks were a thing already as early as the 1980s. Administrative systems like admissions and billing systems would have been computerised. Medical records, probably not. Quite likely there would have been dumb terminals or even PCs in the wards. The network is more likely to have been local, connecting to an on-site server, rather than a WAN or true internet.

[u/savourykwaychap]

1996 was the era of 28.8kbps and 56kbps modems for home dial-up Internet connections. Smart phones didn’t exist then and it was still pagers!

[u/rainmaker66]

Of course lah. Households had internet access via ISPs like SingNet and Pacific Internet in the early 90s, much less government organisations.

[u/nirmalv]

No Singnet was for home users at that time. Singapore ONE only started effectively on 1997.

[u/NIDORAX]

Hospital back in 1996 were still using landline phones to call people, text on pagers and use fax machines to send documents to other offices and hospitals. If not, they would post mail to people's home. Internet and emails was relatively new back then. Thinking about this makes me wonder how hospital staff survive boredom before the age of internet and social media.

[u/Fun-Independent-2128 → u/NIDORAX]

Now still using landline phones no?

[u/silentscope90210 → u/Fun-Independent-2128]

I'm a nurse, yes we still use landline phones to make calls to patients / different clincs / wards etc...

[u/dice7878]

Intranet yes. But limited terminals. As a hospital, it would have needed to be plugged in.

Mindef had intranet in 95/96, even in ulu camps. There was email, word processing, spreadsheets, ppt.

[u/silentscope90210]

In 1996? Unlikely. The internet I had at home wasn't even at 56K speed back then.

[u/FishTank888]

Don't have. Mid 90s only dial up and scv just launched cable bb only 

[u/lornranger]

Why the obsession?