NHS insiders are predicting further delays to the national IT programme following the axing of regional implementation supplier BT’s major software subcontractor for London.

GE Healthcare will be replaced by rival Cerner as part of plans to reorganise delivery in the capital and overcome problems.

NHS IT directors in London have long been unimpressed by the CareCast product that GE inherited when it acquired IDX last November. But management support for the switch to Cerner is tempered by expectations of upheaval and further delay.

There are also unanswered questions about how far the move will ease London’s problems, and it is not yet clear what will happen in the three London hospitals where CareCast is already installed.

‘The swap is possibly the lesser of two evils, but it will cause more delays and there is no evidence that Cerner’s delivery will be much better,’ said one London NHS IT director.

Another source predicted an extra two-and-a-half-year delay.

‘The real question is whether BT has the nous to get this programme done. This move does not yet prove that either way,’ said the source.

CareCast has already been dropped in favour of Cerner by Fujitsu, the systems integrator responsible for the South (Computing, 1 June 2005), prompting concern that using Cerner in London will simply repeat the problems of scale that faced GE.

Cerner’s software has yet to be implemented in any major acute trusts in the South, and sources suggest there are already problems concerning the firm’s capacity. ‘How is Cerner going to resource a whole other area as well?’ said an NHS source.

Under the new arrangements, Cerner will only be delivering hospital systems, rather than the entire GE deal, which included mental health units and GP surgeries.

Other best of breed suppliers will provide the software for other regions.

London is not the only area struggling with its main software subcontractor. Healthcare supplier iSoft, which won the contracts for the North East and Eastern regions managed by Accenture, has changed its predicted profit levels twice this year because of delivery delays.

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