LONDON: More medical transcription work is expected to be outsourced to India, with the British health authorities giving a £620 million 'electronic medical records' contract to British Telecom (BT).

Indian companies are already performing medical transcription work for American hospitals and health care agencies.

Now, the contract to BT involving putting medical records of every patient in Britain on a national database is expected to lead to several sub-contracts to India. BT already has a major presence in India.

All patient records under the National Health Service (NHS) are to be put on a national database for easy access to patients and doctors alike.

The electronic records system has been a key plank in the government's NHS modernisation programme.

Health Secretary John Reid said the system will "completely revolutionise" the way information about patients is accessed and used.

The system will give 50 million patients an individual electronic NHS care record, detailing their treatment in the health service or social care by 2010.

Eventually, patients will be able to access their own NHS record.

The scheme will replace the current patchwork of paper and computer records and connect more than 30,000 GPs and 270 acute, community and mental health NHS trusts in a single, secure national system that can be accessed 24 hours a day.

It aims to end the problem of patients turning up for appointments only to find that their records are not ready or are stuck somewhere else in NHS.

Reports say that another £2 billion worth of contracts have been awarded to link health service systems in London and the north-east to the new record system and the online system used by GPs to book hospital appointments for patients.

Reid said: "At present, most patients have a number of different paper- and computer-based records that cannot be quickly transferred around the system. There is no central record containing all their health and care information.

"Currently, our hospitals hold millions of paper records that have to be manually retrieved when patients need treatment or see a consultant. In the 21st century, this is clearly not an efficient way to store health information.

"The NHS care record will completely revolutionise the way that information is accessed and will make available efficient, secure and integrated records to the right people at the right time."

BT, which won the 10-year, £620 million contract to set up and run the national system, has also been awarded a £996 million contract to connect London NHS organisations to the new system, while consultancy and technology firm Accenture scooped the £1,099 million contract to do the same for the north-east.