FEATURE ARTICLES

With test menus and consolidated solutions to suit any size of laboratory, Roche is now being relied upon by more and more hospital trusts for their diagnostic needs and managed laboratory services support. Here, departments on Guernsey and in Wales demonstrate how their laboratories are benefiting from this support, and we learn about a new bone marker assay.

The 50,000th Siemens Clinitek Status urine analyser has just been installed in the Children’s Ward and Teenage Unit at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. Ward sisters Gail Ashworth and Gillian Rooney and members of the hospital’s point-of-care team were accompanied by some of their patients to receive the analyser from Kate Cox, operational manager at Frimley Park. Members of the Siemens team had travelled to the presentation from Sudbury, Suffolk, where the analyser is made, so that they could see at first hand how it is used in a hospital setting.

Prior to adoption of the EU Blood Safety Directive 2005 (1) into UK law, The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust undertook an audit of its paper-based transfusion process to find that only 70% of transfusion records were available in patients’ case notes. Consequently, the trust sought to amend the process to ensure that the directive’s 100% traceability requirements were met.

Recently, Horiba extended its longstanding relationship with Path Links by entering into a managed service contract for haematology services. Here, Mick Chomyn is questioned about the reasons behind the decision and his thoughts on this increasingly popular approach to financing services in the NHS.

For some time now, the UK has experienced a noticeable manpower shortage of histopathologists. Recruitment into the profession is proving problematic and various factors are responsible for this situation. A freeze in new consultant posts during the 1990s began the steady decline in total numbers. Increasing workloads combined with higher quality standards required by The Royal College of Pathologists and laboratory accreditation bodies such as Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA) UK have significantly added to the pressure, which has resulted in some pathology departments struggling to manage their routine workloads. However, one company now provides a unique solution to these problems, courtesy of their revolutionary online diagnostic reporting service.

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) is performed daily on bacterial isolates in clinical laboratories across the country. It is of great importance in the hospital environment and invaluable to the clinician in the treatment of infectious diseases. Knowledge of a microorganism’s susceptibility to different antibiotics facilitates the choice of the most effective antibacterial agents.

Since February, Tameside General Hospital in Greater Manchester has been an NHS Foundation Trust dedicated to serving the communities of Tameside and Glossop. Collectively, the hospital medical and patient care teams are proud of their improving service and standards. In fact, this progress in standards of care was noted formally by the Department of Health earlier this year in its official review.

In responding to ever-increasing workload, the immunology department at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust looked to Sebia for the latest gel and capillary electrophoresis solutions.

Earlier in the summer, Olympus UK hosted its annual user group meeting in Leicestershire. It proved to be an invaluable forum for sharing customer experiences and building on its reputation as an all-round pathology and healthcare solutions provider.

Randox Laboratories has impacted on the world of clinical diagnostics in a ground-breaking manner. Worldwide, it is ranked 23rd out of over 1600 companies in the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) market, it is the only British manufacturer of clinical diagnostic products and is the sixth largest manufacturer of clinical chemistry reagents.

Conventional tissue processing in histopathology can be a time-consuming exercise. However, use of the very latest technology is having a major impact on working patterns in histopathology, as Emma Colgan explains.

CellNass, the Human Tissue Authority-licensed archive management service located in Newtown, Wales, recently completed the development of a new dedicated facility that increases the available capacity to archive microscope slides, tissue blocks and other human tissue samples.

Interested in setting up a community GP-based international normalised ratio testing scheme but have no idea where to start? Healthcare professionals from Truro explain how an existing community GP-based scheme has been set up and is managed on a daily basis.

Researchers in the UK are at the forefront of developing a gene therapy for cystic fibrosis, an inherited disease that affects 50,000 individuals around the world. Although various organ systems are involved, it is lung disease that is most significant in terms of morbidity and mortality. Here, research scientist Stephanie Sumner-Jones explains how the ABgene SuperPlate is making a difference to her work.

Simon Cutts talks about the products, services and new developments available from Sakura Finetek and the advantages that these will bring to staff in cellular pathology in the UK and Ireland.

A recent Siemens’ two-day point-of-care user meeting provided delegates from across the UK with the very latest information on company offerings in this important area of 21st-century healthcare.

The 15-minute RAPID Hp StAR stool antigen test is a costeffective, non-invasive and reliable test for Helicobacter pylori. Here, Barbara Fallowfield looks at a methodology that shows improved sensitivity and specificity.

University Hospitals Morecambe Bay Trust is in the process of creating an integrated laboratory information system to bring together its three separate pathology sites. When the new system is integrated into the electronic patient record early next year, the trust will have a community-wide, web-based system for viewing patient records, ordering tests and interrogating test results.

Manual methods for vitamin D analysis are both laborious and prone to error. Now, the combination of a new kit designed to measure 25-OH-vitamin D2/3 and an automated liquid handler can reduce the pressure on laboratory staff, as Jacqueline Rippington explains.

In the diagnosis of heart disease, a combination of specific biomarkers and sophisticated imaging techniques now helps to ensure that comprehensive, timely and cost-effective care is available to patients. Sherry Faye explains.