The drive for connectivity in the point-of-care (POC) environment has never been stronger. In an ideal world, all instruments would be connected to the Laboratory Information or Hospital Information System (LIS/HIS). This would provide a safer and more efficient way to transfer data from the instrument to the Electronic Patient Record (EPR). With the responsibility of POC lying firmly at the door of pathology, it means that the end-to-end quality and safety of the entire process needs to be carefully supported.

Smooth management and support via RAPIDLab^® and RAPIDPoint^® Blood Gas testing instruments is essential in all areas of the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust. The Trust went live with its Patient Administration System and started feeding ward test requests to the LIS last summer. It standardized information on forms and samples and attached unique patient identification codes to requests. This immediately supported the tracking of patient samples and eliminated common identification replications and errors. Siemens RAPIDComm^® Data Management Solution enables monitoring of remote analyzers from any workstation, speeds up the response to performance issues, and connects all the instruments through a single interface to the LIS. “The integration of blood gas instruments into our data record systems means that patients can be tracked, recording results is much simpler, and some common errors can be avoided,” states David Harrison, POC Testing Manager at the NHS Trust.