North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust has replaced two legacy laboratory information systems with a single instance of Clinisys WinPath.
The Trust, which serves 800,000 patients in North Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire, found itself with two LIMS on its formation out of the merger of Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals and Hinchingbrooke Health Care in 2017. The new LIMS, plus an extension of the ICE order communications and results reporting system to Hinchingbrooke, will – it says – bring benefits for patients, staff, and GPs, by reducing reliance upon paper, and delivering faster results to GPs and patients, regardless of where blood samples are taken or tested. The new system also harmonises working practices, and makes it easier for clinicians to view the results of tests taken across the Trust’s three hospital sites.
The LIMS and ICE deployments also align with the Trust’s digital strategy to integrate a reduced number of IT systems with a new electronic patient record, and will enable further digital improvement projects and the maturing of the pathology network with neighbouring trusts.
Pathology Services manager, Matthew Smith, said: “We had two old systems from when our Trusts merged. Our vision is a single LIMS and a single order communications system, with a harmonised workflow and a single viewer for clinicians, and we have taken an important step towards delivering that. The Trust also wants to reduce the number of IT systems it uses, and we are aligned with that by reducing the number of LIMS we have in use from two to one, and interfacing with other systems – including the electronic records used in maternity and ED. Moving to a new, modern system enables us to improve efficiency at our laboratories, and will support the delivery of further projects that will bring patient safety and sustainability benefits, by removing paper and plastic from our workflows.”
The Pathology Service at Hinchingbrooke was using an older Clinisys product, but the labs at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals were using a system installed around 30 years ago. The deployment of Clinisys WinPath enables them to benefit from the advances in pathology IT made since then.
The Trust’s Pathology Service is working towards using Clinisys’ data and analysis tools to automatically collect and submit NHS England’s Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset, and to gain more insight into the performance of the labs.
Clinisys added: “The go-lives will also enable further projects, including the introduction of bedside labelling on hospital wards that will support pass-through numbering, and the removal of paper forms and plastic transport bags required for the blood tests collected by the phlebotomy service and GPs.”
Kevin Hall, LIMS Programme director, said: “This project was delivered on time, in 18-months, thanks to the hard work and planning of the pathology and digital teams, working closely with our supplier, Clinisys. Everybody has commented how calm and organised the lab has been since transitioning to the new LIMS. You simply wouldn’t have known we had just gone live with such a significant IT project. A very professional performance by super teams.”
