Medical software firm iSoft, which has a major office on Aston Science Park in Birmingham, said underlying profits for the year to April 30 were relatively unaffected by the change to IFRS accounting.

Normalised pre-tax profits, excluding exceptionals and goodwill, were £ 67 . 4 million, slightly below the £68.5 million reported under UK GAAP.

Pre-tax profits for the year under IFRS were £68.6 million compared to £44.5 million under UK GAAP.

Earlier this month the company named John Weston CBE as its new non-executive chairman.

Mr Weston, formerly chief executive of BAE Systems, is also nonexecutive chairman of Spirent.

As announced in June, Patrick Cryne, iSoft's current non-executive chairman, will step down from the board.

Earlier, the company revealed it was due to buy leading Spanish healthcare IT vendor Novasoft for an initial 12 million euros (£8.1 million) in cash and shares.

Payment would comprise 9 million euros (£6.1 million) in cash and 470,119 iSoft ordinary shares, with iSoft liable for a further 1.8 million euros in cash, and up to 1 . 8 million euros (£1.2 million) in shares if Novasoft meets certain performance targets.

The firm would also take on 3.9 million euros (£2.6 million) of debt in the deal.