Software package and information systems

Tender description

The Welsh Pathology service has undertaken a significant amount of standardisation, with a single national Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) system and Public Health Wales, Microbiology have for many years had a Microbiology Method Development and Standardisation Group (MMDSG) which was set up to standardise, review and update SOPs. Currently there is no central national quality management system, which makes standardisation difficult to maintain. NHS Wales requires a national quality management system, which will be managed by a National Quality Management Team and locally in each health board/service. The Welsh Pathology service has undertaken a significant amount of standardisation, with a single national Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) system and Public Health Wales, Microbiology have for many years had a Microbiology Method Development and Standardisation Group (MMDSG) which was set up to standardise, review and update SOPs. Currently there is no central national quality management system, which makes standardisation difficult to maintain. Where there is no central software for the management of standardised SOPs, and LIMS documentation, this has led in many cases to the health boards each maintaining their own copies of the standard documents, resulting in the inevitable difficulties in version control. NHS Wales requires a national quality management system, which will be managed by a National Quality Management Team and locally in each health board/service. The national team will not only maintain standardised SOPs but also documentation for the new national LIMS service about to be procured including system and training documentation. It may also be used by the current LIMS to maintain validation of the Blood Transfusion module. A key aim of the new LIMS service is to ensure a more standardised implementation with system documentation maintained nationally so that testers sitting with the Wales National Quality Management Team can support local sites with their user acceptance testing.