Brighton’s Royal Sussex County Hospital plans data centre demolition

The Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton plans to demolish its data centre. 

The demolition of the Royal Sussex Hospital forms part of a £750 million ($941 million) modernisation effort in Brighton which first received planning permission in 2012. It is not known what will happen to the data centre equipment how and where the facility will be relocated. The size and IT capacity of the data centre were not shared.

As part of the demolition, half a dozen other buildings are set to be taken down, including the Barry Building, the Nigel Porter Unit, the ENT building, and the Hanbury Building.

Built in 1828, the Barry Building at the Royal Sussex County Hospital was renowned for being the oldest operational NHS building in the country until its closure last year. In place of the levelled buildings, the hospital will construct a £155 million ($194 million) cancer treatment centre.

“It will bring state-of-the-art purpose-built facilities, employing novel treatments and technologies, expertise and research together in an environment that supports improved patient and staff experience for our radiotherapy, oncology and haematology departments,” said George Findlay, Chief Executive Officer at University Hospitals Sussex.

Consultant Oncologist and Chief of Service for Cancer, Sarah Westwell, said the new cancer treatment centre has been meticulously designed with patients’ wellbeing at the heart of every decision.

“Our new cancer centre will bring world-class cancer care to Brighton and Sussex, helping to save lives at a time when one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime,” added Westwell.

The cancer treatment centre is expected to be completed in 2028.

In January, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) confirmed that all physical data centres were decommissioned following one of the largest cloud migrations the NHS has ever undertaken.

The NHS did not disclose which cloud provider is hosting the Spine. However, a June 2023 blog post said it intended to host Spine services on Amazon Web Services.

The decision to decommission physical data centres is aligned with one of the NHS architecture principles. The ‘Public Cloud first principle’ states digital services should move to the public cloud unless there is a clear reason not to do so.

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