The document discusses the history and current state of IT at the Royal Marsden NHS Trust (RMH). It describes how RMH developed its own software toolkit called ETHOS in the 1980s to build clinical applications using a functional programming approach. ETHOS integrated a database component with the programming environment. RMH has since migrated its systems to run on InterSystems Caché, which provides high performance, scalability and rapid application development capabilities suitable for healthcare IT. The document argues Caché is a good fit for RMH's needs as its systems continue to evolve and serve new protocols over HTTP.