Operations smoothed in Path Lab

Friarage Hospital in Northallerton Yorkshire, part of the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has installed the UK’s first VersaCell™ sample management system combining chemistry and immunoassay analysers from Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.

By automating testing between chemistry and immunoassay analysers, manual loading tasks are reduced and workflow streamlined. This has proven to save time on sample checks, or on correcting barcode errors, which was previously found to be impacting on samples arriving for processing after 3.30 pm .

“The time spent previously looking for samples has been recovered and this is a big help,” stated Derek Parrington, Operations Manager of the Blood Sciences Department at Friarage Hospital. “The software can instantly tell us what the sample status is and we can easily see if there are any outstanding in house test requests. The software also alerts us straightaway is there is a barcode reading error. This means we can give issues attention in real time throughout the day rather than it impacting onto the end of day shift.”

He continues: “Turnaround times for A&E have also improved. We used to have to do a lot of chasing to deliver the results and manually walk samples between chemistry and immunoassay analysers. Now a result is gained in just 18 minutes from loading onto the VersaCell, meaning that the result is back with A&E in around half an hour.” Siemens.