iSoft said that, given the absence of a local service provider in the region, it is ready to deal directly with trusts to implement its electronic patient record software from scratch or migrate to it.
"The changes to the programme allow us to build on relationships in the south that existed before the programme began," said Gary Cohen, iSoft's chief executive.
He added that more than half of the south's NHS trusts already use software produced by the firm: "We are now re-engaging with these customers to upgrade existing systems, and contribute to a strategy to gradually replace these systems with Lorenzo."
The firm said it can offer an incremental migration to the full suite of Lorenzo software, avoiding a 'big bang' implementation. Several trusts introducing new software under the National Programme have suffered severe problems when switching across.
Trusts in the programme's southern region, which covers the South West, South Central and South East Coast Strategic Health Authories, had initially been due to use Cerner's Millennium software under the National Programme for IT and its local service provider Fujitsu.
However, following Fujitsu's departure from the programme last year, only eight acute trusts had introduced Millennium under the programme. BT, which acts as local service provider in London, was contracted to support them and 25 mental health trusts earlier this year in return for a fee of £546m.
iSoft said its relationship with CSC, with which it is implementing Lorenzo in the north, is unaffected by the move.
Chris Pennell, senior analyst with Kable, suggested the move will interest some but not all of the relevant trusts.
"Greater choice can only be good for the southern cluster, and it is good to see that iSoft is adopting a step by step approach rather than a rip and replace, which should help to reassure trusts in as much as they can see a clear path along which they can migrate," he said.
"However, trusts have already been looking around at external solutions since the cancellation of the LSP contract and several trusts have chosen not to take existing solutions and have looked outside and we expect other trusts to follow."
