It has emerged that BT Health may be in line to take on part of the NHS IT contract that Fujitsu recently walked out of.

Head of NHS Connecting for Health Gordon Hextal told the House of Commons that BT Health was in talks to take over the programme at eight trusts.

These trusts have already rolled out the Cerner Millennium Care Records Service software, which is part of an IT upgrade that Fujitsu supplied prior to pulling out of developments.

According to online publication e-healthinsider.com, Patrick O'Connel, BT Health's managing director, stated: "We've been asked to look at the eight trusts that have Cerner live."

It was also reported that it would take until at least July before any formal deal could be concluded.

In May, the £895 million contract that was due to go to Fujitsu services after negotiations between the software supplier and the NHS failed to come to a conclusion.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent) In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'