Oral History of Melville (Mel) Hodge

Mel Hodge, a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, among other things, led Lockheed's development of MIS, the pioneering medical information system now an IEEE milestone: https://ethw.org/Milestones:Pioneering_Medical_Information_System,_1965-1974

Mel grew up in Rock Island, Illinois, and attended the Cooperative Engineering Program in Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University graduating in 1951. He joined Lockheed in 1955, where he was involved in setting up the newly formed Missile and Space Division (now LMSC, LMS Company) in Palo Alto, California. Responsible for recruiting several thousand scientists and engineers he helped establish Lockheed as one of the largest early employers in Silicon Valley

In 1965, Mel was tasked with diversifying the company into new fields; he chose healthcare systems, where his team pioneered the first Hospital Information System (HIS) designed for direct use by healthcare providers; it had the first successful commercial use at El Camino Hospital, Mountain View, California. When Lockheed needed to divest this business in 1971, Mel identified a buyer and became co-founder, later CEO, then returning as Board member of Technicon Medical Information Systems. Technicon’s pioneering technology became standard in the industry, and by 1997 its product was installed in over 200 institutions, and its use continued through a series of mergers into this century.

After Technicon, Mel had a variety of experiences with new technologies, startup ventures, and advisory roles. This included developing and commercializing Low-E technology for windows.

He is the author of Medical Information Systems: A Resource for Hospitals, Aspen Publications, 1978 and “History of the TDS Medical Information System” from A History of Medical Informatics, June 1990. Mel was sponsored by Lockheed as a Stanford Sloan Fellow from 1960-61. He was a member of the IRE before it merged into the IEEE.

A transcript of his oral history is available at https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Melville_(Mel)_Hodge#Transcript