New NHS lab turning round 15,000 blood tests an hour

A Greater Manchester hospital has become the first in the UK to use a new laboratory system designed to reduce test result waiting times.

Royal Oldham Hospital's FlexLab X can process up to 15,525 blood test tubes every hour.

The hospital said this would massively speed up diagnosis times for patients.

There is only one other FlexLab machine in a hospital anywhere in the world.

Joanna Borzomato, consultant clinical scientist, said: "We all know when we get our blood tests done, there is quite a lot of anxiety around waiting for your blood tests so the quicker we can get those results back to the clinician the quicker they can make a decision, then that takes some of that anxiety away".

The machine will support other hospitals including those of the Wrightington, Wigan, and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust.

When samples are loaded onto the new system, it will transport blood and other samples across the laboratory, loading tubes onto the analysers for testing.

Stewart Hutton, head of northern Europe for Siemens Healthineers, said: "If you go to laboratories where this type of solution isn't present, you'll find a lot of worn shoes because there is a lot of work to move tubes from individual analyser to individual analyser, this takes away all of that.

"Essentially staff can focus on where there might be some abnormalities... and this typically removes human error."

Delia Gallagher, biochemistry technical manager, said: "The machine can prioritise which blood samples are the most urgent.

Ms Borzomato said it will also improve workload for staff.

"This takes away every single manual step," she added.

"You can put the sample on at the beginning and get a result at the end within a very quick time period".

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