NHS trusts adopt iSOFT's path lab reporting tool to improve efficiency

21 Feb 2011

Two UK hospital trusts have installed the CorVu laboratory management reporting tool from iSOFT’s to improve pathology department performance.

North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust will use CorVu to analyse department statistics to improve the turnaround times of pathology tests at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and nearby West Cumberland Hospital at Whitehaven. The order follows the Trust's recent upgrade of iSOFT’s laboratory information system, i.Laboratory.

At St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust in London, CorVu is replacing a management reporting system that is unable to keep pace with the demands on modern pathology services. Its 180 pathology staff deal with 697,000 orders and 7.5 million pathology tests a year.

“Being able to view workloads in real time will enable us to closely match resources and respond at once to pressures and changing priorities,” said the trust’s project manager, Andrew Stewart. “With CorVu, we can view departmental data in greater depth to expose problem areas and so increase throughput and improve quality.”

The move to CorVu is part of an overhaul of laboratory systems at the 1,000-bed St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, and coincides with a new five-year deal. The contract extension includes an upgrade to iSOFT’s latest i.Laboratory solution and new hardware.

St George’s Healthcare has used i.Laboratory since 1994 and partnered on several key developments, including a blood transfusion module, and will again collaborate to further develop the CorVu product.

“The integration of the CorVu application is part of our customer promise to deliver innovative solutions that improve performance and deliver genuine business benefits,” said Adrian Stevens, Managing Director of iSOFT’s UK and Ireland business. “As the UK’s largest provider of laboratory information systems, we have a responsibility to constantly innovate to help our customers meet ever-demanding efficiency, quality and cost targets.”

The introduction of CorVu in the UK follows an agreement with its US-based developers, Rocket Software.