NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS) has selected InterSystems as its national laboratory information management system (Lims) partner.
The Welsh Assembly Government funding of GBP12.1m will be used to implement a single instance of InterSystems TrakCare Lab.
The programme will support the increasing diagnostic activity, currently more than 21 million tests a year, for the whole of Wales, which has a population of around three million.
TrakCare Lab's functionality enables the programme to implement a regional deployment model that supports the alignment of the 18 independent laboratories with the seven regional health boards.
This will facilitate the standardisation of practice, improved clinical governance and increase the capacity and flexibility to meet future demand and new developments.
The main objectives for this programme are: to have a fully supported networked Lims available for implementation from January 2011; to improve clinical data and management information flows to meet the needs of NHS Wales; and to improve the functionality and flexibility of the pathology IT system to meet current and future service needs.
Compared with the existing laboratory systems, the centrally managed solution will reduce costs for support and maintenance.
These projected savings include a 50 per cent reduction in data maintenance and extraction costs, as well as a 30 per cent reduction in analyser interface costs.
New capabilities include distribution of workload across sites, real-time infection surveillance and management and the improvement of equality and continuity of patient care.
The laboratory data will be stored in the InterSystems Cache high-performance object database to provide users with a complete view of a patient's diagnostic record and contribute to an individual care record for patients in the NHS in Wales.
TrakCare Lab meets all the operational needs of modern pathology services and is designed to streamline the activities across all disciplines for the smallest to largest laboratories.
Integral to TrakCare Lab is InterSystems Ensemble, a platform for integration and the development of connectable applications, which will provide interoperability between the pathology service and other local and national systems.
