Increased electronic requesting: the Barts and The London experience

In 2008, Barts and The London NHS Trust (BLT) established a pathology IT board to manage and monitor the trust’s investment in IT and ensure that it delivered real benefits both to patients and clinicians. The board, which consisted of stakeholders from pathology management, clinical leadership and IT, together with representatives from the trust’s key software supplier, CliniSys, had recognised that IT was to play a major role in the continuing commercialisation of pathology services, and wanted to ensure that BLT was able to capitalise on this by increasing its existing business and securing new business opportunities.

Over the following three years, the board has presided over the winning of a record number of competitive tenders, overseen the successful implementation of some 15 projects, and recorded a 58% increase in the number of electronic requests, which have now risen to over seven million per year.

Stringent service level agreements
In 2008, BLT provided Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) with just a handful of tests. Today, the improved data quality and results turnaround of the electronic referrals solution has resulted in BHRUT consolidating all referrals with BLT, which now provides 136 different orderable tests under strict service level agreements (SLAs).