The government's £12.7bn upgrade of the NHS's IT systems suffered yet another setback yesterday as the programme's contractor in the south of England, Fujitsu, had its £896m contract terminated.
With the project already over budget and far behind schedule, the withdrawal of Fujitsu is likely to add further delays. There are now only two main contractors left on the world's largest non-military IT scheme, which began with four. US-based Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) runs the programme in the north, Midlands and east of England; BT runs it in London and has built the nationwide infrastructure.
A spokesman for BT said last night the company would consider taking on Fujitsu's work if the opportunity arose. When the fourth contractor, Accenture, abandoned the NHS project two years ago, its estimated £2bn workload was picked up by CSC.
Parliament's spending watchdog warned this month that the whole programme would not be completed for at least another six years, putting it four years behind schedule. The National Audit Office said plans for a national digital record of the medical files of 50 million patients might not come to fruition until 2015.
Some parts of the programme have been proceeding well - every hospital has equipment to digitally store and transmit x-rays. But implementation of the national programme at a local level has been patchy.
In the south, Fujitsu has been installing patient records software developed by US-based Cerner. The system has crashed twice in the past month, according to reports. It started using Cerner's software three years ago after dumping its initial supplier, America's IDX, because the company kept missing deadlines.
Another software supplier, iSoft, got into such trouble it was eventually bought out by Australia's IBA Health.
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