Oxford's major hospitals could be reorganised into a ground-breaking academic super trust as early as next year.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is in the process of redrawing its existing bid to become a foundation trust, in order to create a new type of health trust with Oxford University.

It holds out the promise of a new era in health care in the city, with improvements in the quality of treatments and an influx of top doctors from across the globe. It would also attract massive extra funding for medical research, with local patients benefiting more quickly from medical breakthroughs.

It now looks like the ORH Trust will submit an application to become an academic foundation trust as a first step to becoming one of Britain's first academic health science centres in 2009.

The Government has signalled it wants to see a number of hospitals and leading research centres coming together as academic centres, with the elite designation amounting to "an internationally recognised badge of excellence". Oxford, Cambridge and three London hospitals are tipped to make up the first five academic centres.

Oxford University and the chief executive of the ORH Trust, Trevor Campbell Davis, have already indicated their enthusiasm for the initiative.

But many will be taken aback by news that they believe the new super trust could be created as early as the first half of next year, in one of the biggest local health service reorganisations for years.

The academic centre would incorporate the John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals, along with Banbury's Horton, with the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre keen to join to secure the specialist hospital's future.

Oxford's position looked to have been complicated by the fact that ORH Trust was already at an advanced stage in its bid to become a foundation hospital. Some consultants had expressed anxiety that the foundation trust bid could hinder what they see as being the real prize — a fully fledged health partnership with the university.

But Mr Campbell Davis has revealed that after talks with the university, the trust is preparing to modify its foundation application.

And it will seek to become the country's first academic foundation trust to facilitate its progress to becoming an academic science centre as quickly as possible.

The idea of academic health science centres is inspired by partnerships between universities and health providers that are common in the United States, where the top 15 hospitals in the country are all academic health science centres.

The creation of the centre would formalise the university's complex relationship with local teaching hospitals that has developed over decades.

With uncertainty surrounding the NOC's future as an independent trust, the specialist hospital in Headington has made clear its desire to join a new academic super trust.

Chief executive Jan Fowler, pictured left, said: "We believe this option will best safeguard our specialist services and will deliver more innovation and high quality medical research to the benefit of our patients."