Roche has announced that it is providing a point-of-care (POC) managed laboratory services (MLS) to three NHS hospital trusts in the north of England.
These include the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Trust and the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust.
Under the agreement, Roche will provide a fully connected POC glucose-testing service across all three sites that will help the trusts to meet new and ongoing Clinical Pathology Accreditation (LTD) requirements with regards to POC glucose testing.
The managed service covers 185 wireless-enabled Accu-Chek Inform II blood glucose meters, which will be located in four hospitals across the three sites in Liverpool.
Connectivity to the laboratory information system (and ultimately to the hospital information systems) is achieved via wireless connection, using the powerful Cobas IT1000 dedicated data management system.
Information is transferred bi-directionally and automatically, allowing real-time availability of test results and a full audit trail.
Kath Ashton, POC testing manager for the Blood Sciences Department at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, has responsibility for the management of the new blood glucose testing service.
She said: 'Previously, we used handheld glucose meters with no connectivity.
'Performing nearly half a million tests every year, monitoring internal quality control and external quality assessment of glucose testing was labour intensive, involving bi-monthly audits on each instrument.
'Our managed service agreement with Roche has allowed us to upgrade our meters to have full connectivity, so that audit trails are now provided automatically - from the requesting of tests to the reporting of results, including user identification and training status, patient identification, internal quality control and external quality control results.'
Ashton added: 'Wireless connectivity will remove the potential risk of transcription errors in the reporting of results and allows me to monitor the quality control status of each instrument centrally.
'This saves significant costs in terms of time and effort.
'In addition to meeting all Wi-Fi security capability standards, Roche, as part of the agreement, also provides training and service support, which is essential for the size of our project.
'We are able to keep an up-to-date training record of all users, and the Cobas Academy re-certification e-learning package for on-going training updates will reduce the need for training workshops away from the clinical area, which are time-consuming and difficult to co-ordinate.'
As part of the managed laboratory service agreement, fixed monthly or quarterly budgets are agreed based on an expected workload.
In return, the trusts receive guaranteed service levels, system upgrades and full service support.
