Just when the National Health Service’s mighty and troubled £12.7bn programme to provide every patient in England with an electronic record looked as though it might be about to turn an important corner, it has skidded off the road again.

The resulting accident is not yet terminal. But it does mean more dire headlines and it is hard to see how the news of Fujitsu’s departure from the Connecting for Health programme will not produce further delays to an electronic record that is already running more than four years late – even if some parts of the exercise, ironically, may speed up.