On the road with the NLMC and NPEx

The National Laboratory Medicine Catalogue (NLMC) aims to standardise the requesting, reporting and analysing of pathology tests to ensure the right patient gets the right test at the right time. The NLMC is a standardised list of pathology tests validated for use within the NHS. Each item in the list is coded based on a number of core attributes that make each definition unique. This means that hospital doctors, GPs, nurses and other health professionals can be certain that they are requesting the right test every time.

The National Pathology Exchange (NPEx) is a national service for NHS pathology managers. It works like a telephone exchange by connecting pathology laboratory systems to a national network so that they can send and receive test requests and results electronically to any other laboratory in the UK which is also connected. A dashboard allows laboratory staff to control test routes and track the location of samples.  The service is provided by The Health Informatics Service, an NHS organisation hosted by Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, with 240 health informatics professionals providing IT systems and services to 23,000 users.

Roadshow cooperation
Over the past six months NLMC and NPEx have been cooperating in a roadshow event that has stopped this year in the West Midlands, Somerset, Kent, Cambridgeshire and Oxford, with its 2015 programme set to include events in London on 8 January and in Scotland on 27 February.