The South West Alliance Of Rural Health (SWARH) is an Alliance of public health agencies in the South West of Victoria covering an area of approximately 60,000 sq. kilometres connecting all public acute hospitals and associated health services in a region extending from west of Melbourne to the South Australian Border. SWARH was formed in late 1997 to focus on the development of IT for the Acute Public Hospitals in the South West Region of Victoria. In addition to the financial incentive provided by the Department of Human Services, the SWARH Alliance has been fortunate to have a group of Chief Executive Officers and Hospital Boards who, although not technically expert, have appreciated the fact that as individual agencies, the capacity to invest in technology to improve service delivery and gain returns on the investment required was not possible on their own.