Another day, another problem besetting the troubled NHS programme for IT – once Tony Blair's beacon of British modernity, now something of a flickering low-energy bulb in our gloomy, Brown-hued times.

An NHS trust serving half a million acute patients has announced that it is pulling out of the Cerner Millennium electronic care record system because it has lost confidence in the project.

And why the sudden change of heart (if you'll pardon the expression) at The Royal United Hospital Bath Trust (RUH)? The departure of southern area programme provider Fujitsu, said a spokeswoman.

Authorities are now trying to decide whether Bath will source its own provider to implement the system when Fujitsu finally quits in November, or use other MPfIT providers BT or CSC.

Either decision would inevitably cause delays and complications: as the spokeswoman admitted, independently sourcing a provider would mean funding the project locally. That is not the most PR-friendly of announcements for such a Trust to make at any time, let alone in a downturn that may tip into a year-end recession. Using another programme provider would confuse the national picture.

The RUH spokeswoman said: "Following the termination of the contract between the NHS and Fujitsu, and subsequent meetings between the trust, Fujitsu, Cerner and Connecting for Health, the assessment of the RUH trust board was that it did not have sufficient confidence in the level of support that it would receive from the suppliers, at and beyond the go-live period, to proceed with the implementation of Millennium."

Of course, what she was really saying is this: customers' good relationships with their suppliers are at the core of large outsourcing projects, and are essential to make them work. If a supplier is forced out of a deal because the goalposts are constantly being moved by the government, then that has an all-too-human impact at the point where the service is supplied.

Whitehall needs to understand that the NPfIT is yet more proof that such projects must be about people and relationships if they are to work.

They are not about screwing every last penny out of some faceless service drone who does not have the good fortune to be a management consultant with a blank cheque from Downing Street.