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Nine National Health Service (NHS) trusts in Wales have had their laboratory information systems upgraded as part of a £1m IT contract, it has been reported.
The move means that every NHS trust in Wales will run the same version of software provider iSoft’s i.Laboratory TP application, after North East Wales NHS Trust and Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust received upgrades last year under a separate contract, according to the E-Health Insider website.
“Previously, the trusts were running the application on single servers,” an iSoft spokesperson said. “Now, high availability clustering technology provides greater resilience and a more reliable service, leading to a faster turnaround of test results.”
iSoft’s managing director, Paul Richards, said that the project had been completed on schedule thanks to the “very close cooperation” between the company and staff at each trust.
Ian Kilbourn, the laboratory systems manager at North West Wales NHS Trust, which has been using the system for some time, said it had proved invaluable: “We are now able to gather information in minutes rather than hours and the whole system is much more robust, with instant screen refresh.”
The contract was initiated by Informing Healthcare, the Welsh Assembly programme set up to improve patient care through better use of information and IT.
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