A Bolton healthcare IT provider is looking forward to its most successful year yet after announcing a set of "very encouraging" interim results.

Ascribe, which employs 170 people at its base in Branker Street, Westhoughton, said that in the six months to December 31, 2006, turnover increased to £7.5 million, up 65 per cent from £4.5 million the previous year.

Profit was up by 59 per cent, from £980,000 to £1.56 million.

Stephen Critchlow, Ascribe's co-founder and executive chairman, said that the company improved its market share by selling products directly to Hospital Trusts, which could not wait for the Government's own IT system - the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) - to be finalised and implemented.

He said: "In the first half year of trading we have committed investment to research and development to ensure that we have the systems in place to support a period of substantial growth, which we expect to come from customers that have now waited too long for delivery from the NPfIT.

"We expect that this demand will add new business without affecting the core stability of the group's income streams.

"An excellent order intake in December meant that the actual order book taken into 2007 was at a record high, providing a solid platform for the second half of our financial year."

Trading across the group has been buoyant, with Ascribe continuing to win new business, particularly in its pharmacy and primary and unscheduled care divisions.

In December, Ascribe's mental health and community care division won its largest order - worth £1.87 million - since the company's 2005 flotation on the Alternative Investment Market.

Bosses now hope to consolidate the company's development team, now over 80 strong, with 10 additional staff over the coming year.

Mr Critchlow added: "We are now in a good position to grow the group further, organically and by acquisition.

"Our pipeline for new sales has never been stronger, both in this country and overseas."