University Hospital Southampton in the UK is getting a new data center.

As reported by the Daily Echo, the hospital has had plans for a new data center building approved by the local council.

Plans for the project were first submitted in December 2025. The data center will be located at 89 Laundry Road, next to the hospital, which currently has a detached house on the property.

The existing building, garage, and outbuildings will be demolished, along with the removal of several small trees, for the establishment of the data center.

The data center building will span one story and have solar panels installed on the roof. It is hoped to give the hospital access to “secure, resilient, and scalable” digital infrastructure.

Architect Hunters said in a planning statement: “The proposed development will consolidate existing office and data center spaces into a single, purpose-built facility located within the hospital grounds, adjacent to the Wellbeing Hub along Laundry Road.

“The new building is part of UHS’s broader strategic master plan to enhance the operational efficiency and service delivery of its estates management.”

In addition to the data center space, the building will have a switch room, workshop, meeting room, kitchenette, and accessible toilet.

Details regarding construction timelines and expected IT capacity have not been shared.

The UK’s NHS has previously made an effort to migrate to the cloud where appropriate and decommissioned the data centers previously hosting the NHS Spine system. Individual NHS Trusts and hospitals continue to operate their own data centers. Last month, Crown Hosting Data Centres won a $1.34m contract from the NHS.

In November 2025, Schneider Electric and DataCentre UK deployed two modular data centers for South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust (SWFT) in the UK. Earlier that same month, it was announced that waste heat from data centers in the Milton Keynes area would be used to heat the city’s hospital.

While efforts to modernize and expand digital infrastructure for healthcare in the UK are ongoing, many areas still struggle with legacy IT, and outages can have massive consequences. In January, Kent and Medway doctors’ surgeries experienced an outage that prevented them from accessing online services.