Northern Ireland completes nationwide LIMS roll-out

Western and Southern trusts went live with the LIMS in their microbiology, blood sciences, and blood transfusion services at the end of April. They had already gone live in cellular pathology at an earlier stage of the CoreLIMS programme to deploy the LIMS to all five territorial trusts and the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service. Previously, both organisations were using a system that was 30 years old and at the end of life.

Jennifer Welsh, SRO of the Northern Ireland Pathology Information Management System (NIPIMS), said: "The completion of the CoreLIMS roll-out marks a major milestone in the transformation of pathology services across Northern Ireland. For the first time, every health and social care trust is working from the same modern laboratory system, creating a truly connected service that puts patients first. This achievement is the result of exceptional teamwork across trusts, especially our laboratories as well as our partners, and I want to sincerely thank everyone who played a part.

“With this foundation in place, we can now look forward to delivering even greater benefits - from reducing repeat testing to supporting clinicians with faster, more complete information, and eventually enabling innovations like vein-to-vein tracking. It’s a proud moment for all involved.”

Jennifer is pictured above with Clinisys management team and trust staff at Altnagelvin laboratory celebrating their successful go-live.

Northern Ireland’s pathology transformation programme was set up to create an integrated, regional laboratory service to streamline management, modernise working conditions, and improve access for patients. CoreLIMS was developed by the Business Services Organisation to support the programme, by replacing a mix of in-house and legacy systems with a LIMS designed for modern pathology networks.

Clinisys won the contract in October 2021 and the first phase of the project was completed two years later, when Belfast and South Eastern health and social care trusts went live within days of each other in November 2023.

The second phase was delivered last June, when the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service (NIBTS) and cellular pathology services went live. The third phase followed in late October, with a go-live at Northern Health and Social Care Trust.

Karin Jackson, SRO of CoreLIMS and Chief Executive of NIBTS, said: “The completion of the CoreLIMS roll-out opens the door to future enhancements in how we manage and deliver vital blood components across Northern Ireland. We can already see real benefits from this investment with streamlined workflows across all services, including transfusion. It has been an impressive achievement, particularly given the complexity of the systems and processes involved. I would like to thank everyone involved for their professionalism, commitment and resilience that has delivered a smooth and successful implementation of CoreLIMS across Northern Ireland.”

The implementations had to be integrated with the encompass system, which is creating a single, digital health record for every citizen.

Robin Bell, senior project manager at Clinisys, said the final go-lives had gone smoothly, and said this was down to the hard work that had been done early in the CoreLIMS programme to standardise tests and harmonise workflows. He also paid tribute to BSO and to laboratory staff across Northern Ireland for their work to test the new system and to provide the assurance required for successive go-lives. “This is a true pathology network,” he said. “They make decisions as a region. We have not deployed five solutions to the health and social care trust, where each one is just a little bit different to another. We have rolled out a single system that everybody uses in the same way. We look forward to supporting the system and helping laboratories across the region to get the very best out of it for their clinicians and patients.”