Transforming pathology: reporting proceedings of a national workshop

Pathology services are changing at a pace that continues to gain momentum. This has been fuelled by Lord Carter’s published findings and recommendations, changes in service commissioning, and advances in molecular diagnostics and genetics. Furthermore, change needs to be aligned with the changes in healthcare provision to respond to the expected impacts of an ageing population and the associated increase in chronic diseases. Immediate drivers for change appear to be focused on performance and productivity improvement and the response to the regional commissioning of GP direct-access pathology testing.

The market is responding to these drivers for change in various ways, including through the development of regional pathology networks, typically following hub-and-spoke models; implementing process optimisation and Lean; addressing inappropriate testing and demand management; and embracing innovation and new technology.

Over the past few years, CliniSys has worked with more developing pathology networks and multisite pathology operations in the UK than any other supplier of pathology IT solutions and has helped support service consolidation and transformation both with existing and new customers. Capturing the requirements, experience and lessons learned in supporting multisite pathology service models, CliniSys has focused considerable investment in WinPath Enterprise, its network-optimised laboratory information management system (LIMS), to enable and support flexible and expandable service transformation and secure the benefits realisable through structured change and consolidation.