Improving efficiency with new cutting-edge analysers at SWLP

The South West London  Pathology (SWLP) partnership provides an integrated pathology service across south-west London. Initially set up by three large hospitals – St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust and Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – the partnership serves more than 3.5 million people. The SWLP partnership also covers the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH)  and  the  New  Victoria  Hospital, a private hospital in Kingston, as well as 200 GP practices and 30 healthcare centres.

The partnership also provides its diagnostic and clinical support to other GP practices beyond south-west London, along with other NHS institutions and private organisations. With 150,000 patients coming into the accident and emergency department (A&E) each year at St George’s Hospital alone, the hospitals require highly reliable and robust technology to deliver accurate patient results.

Each of the three hospitals in the partnership has a trauma centre, A&E department, operating theatres and maternity services. Laboratories at each hospital are responsible for processing and testing samples collected on-site. Across the network there were over 43 million tests carried out in 2019, with around 25,000 samples processed daily. The hub laboratory, which is located at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, processes the majority of the area’s pathology samples, as well as its own work. This includes samples from GP practices and healthcare centres, bringing the number of samples tested at St George’s to around 9000 a day.