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By Jon Bernstein, 13 June 2002 07:59

NEWS One of five high-profile IT firms is in line to pick up a lucrative £5bn contract to computerised the national health service (NHS) - and only one of them is British, according to a newspaper report this morning. The list that includes BT also features EDS, IBM, Siemens and Sema. The project to computerise patient records, appointment booking and prescriptions was announced by health minister, Lord Hunt yesterday. Lord Hunt acknowledged that the decision to centralise projects previously implemented by individual health authorities had been taken to speed up NHS computerisation. Government targets meant that 35 per cent of hospitals should be computerised this year, and 100 per cent by 2005. The Independent, which revealed the list of bidders, points out that a number of these companies come with a poor track record in implementing government projects. EDS was blamed for delays for the Child Support Agency project while Siemens was part of the Passport Agency contract that suffered major problems. The Treasury has still to sanction the £5bn spending plan although the Department of Health remains confident that it will do so. The Labour government has ongoing commitment to improve the NHS following heavy criticism during the 2001 general election campaign. As silicon.com reported on Monday, NHS IT expenditure for this year is already likely to exceed the £1.1bn budget. According to analysts Kable the figure will be more like £1.4bn.