Microbiological cultures

Tender description

NHS Blood and Transplant is a Special Health Authority (the ‘Authority’), responsible for the provision of blood components and tissues and a range of associated specialist laboratory and patient therapeutic services to hospitals in England and North Wales. The Authority operates at a local level through a network of Blood Centres but is structured nationally for managerial control with a single management team under its own Chief Executive Officer. The Authority requires a fully integrated bacterial risk reduction managed service for platelet components which would either be a pathogen inactivation service or a bacterial screening service. This Tender Is For Bacterial Screening Only. The current sites are in Filton (Bristol), Manchester, Newcastle, Colindale (London) and Sheffield, however the NHSBT Board has accepted proposals to modernise and consolidate manufacturing into 3 sites (Manchester, Filton and Colindale) in 2017. These sites manufacture approximately 300 000 adult therapeutic doses of platelets each year. Confirmation testing, reference work and batch acceptance testing is currently performed by the National Bacteriology Laboratory in Colindale. The Authority reserves the right to terminate this procurement at any stage during the process at its sole discretion. This contract is initially for a period of 2 years (24 months) but NHSBT reserve the right to extend this by up to a further 3 years (36 months) which are available to take in 3, 1 year increments.