NHS Wales rolls out national LIMS program

NHS Wales has completed the first phase of the national rollout of InterSystems TrakCare Lab, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary laboratory information management system (LIMS). The product is designed to support modern laboratories that provide consolidated, comprehensive pathology services.

NHS Wales chose TrakCare Lab, part of the TrakCare unified healthcare information system from InterSystems, as the foundation for its national pathology program to connect 18 laboratories in six health boards across Wales. The program will replace eight different laboratory systems with one TrakCare Lab system, enabling more than 21 million tests per year to be managed by one system. It is an integral part of the One Wales initiative to provide a fully integrated healthcare record across the whole of Wales.

The first phase of the implementation covered all four labs in the Hywel Dda Health Board, each of which ran smoothly with no downtime. Withybush General Hospital was the first to go live on 9 September 2013, followed by Glangwili General Hospital and Prince Philip Hospital on 14 October 2013. The Bronglais General Hospital laboratory, which went live on 3 December 2013, completed the blood sciences and microbiology rollouts.

The LIMS deployment is a collaboration among the Pathology Service, the Pathology Modernisation Agenda for Wales and the NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS). The standardisation of pathology test sets will enable consistent diagnostic services across Wales and will reduce the number of unnecessary duplicate or repeat tests, saving time and money. When fully implemented and combined with other national developments in Wales, the LIMS will support key government initiatives to deliver high-quality services to patients within the principality.

The implementation of TrakCare Lab provides a number of benefits:

• Better services for patients by providing a single pathology record accessible anywhere the information is needed, reducing the number of diagnostic tests required and improving safety.
• Increased efficiency and effectiveness of care for healthcare professionals by enabling access to a common, up-to-date diagnostic record for more effective treatment decisions.
• Improved pathology services through a reduction in duplicate and repeat testing, as well as the increased ability to share workload across the service.
• Ease of user adoption as a result of an implementation methodology that ensured the more robust system could be deployed with minimal impact on normal laboratory activities.

Dr Mike Simmons, Public Health Wales microbiology consultant for Hywel Dda and one of the first to use the new system, commented, “We are already seeing many benefits in Hywel Dda, including improved clinical outputs from the microbiology labs, which are having a very positive benefit in respect to patient care.”

Paul Grabscheid, vice president of strategic planning at InterSystems, said the company is “very familiar with the requirements and intricacies of a national laboratory program of this kind”.

“In South Africa, for example, TrakCare Lab underpins the national laboratory service for the management of pandemics and chronic illnesses. This supports approximately 38 million uninsured people through more than 250 laboratories nationwide - an experience we can draw upon for Wales. With the successful Hywel Dda deployment, our focus is to ensure that the remaining health boards go live with equal success.”

The Welsh LIMS national laboratory pathology modernisation program is planned for completion during 2014. The LIMS will also service national specialist services including Cervical Cytology, Welsh Blood Service, Public Health Wales for Microbiology and Infection Control Services.