NHS National Services Scotland plans to move the country’s health boards to a new laboratory information management system (LIMS) contract with a single operator, worth an estimated £216 million over up to 16 years.
Under the framework, each health board will have five years to replace its existing LIMS and will enter a 10-year contract to use the new system with the option of two three-year extensions. The specification for the new LIMS will be set by a consortium of 11 of the 14 health boards.
The new system will cover disciplines including blood sciences, blood transfusion, cellular pathology, microbiology and genetics. It will standardise processes, workflow and coding with the aim of helping to share lab data across Scotland.
“The implementation of a common, modern LIMS is required to help realise the aims of NHS Scotland’s digital strategies and also to be a key enabler for the National Laboratories Programme to deliver NHS Scotland’s strategic aim for clinical laboratory services in the form of a distributed service model,” says the procurement notice, published in the Official Journal of the EU.
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