NHS Cumbria has chosen Anglia Healthcare Systems Ltd to provide primary care pathology requesting and reporting to over 50 GP Practices in North Cumbria. The Trust has placed an order for the supply of ICE Desktop to allow the GP Practices to seamlessly connect to the Acute Trust based ICE application and to order directly into the Acute Trust Telepath pathology system. GPs will also be able to view a complete results summary for registered patients and if required, request a copy of any appropriate result to be sent to them electronically.

Brad Cheek, lead GP within the PCT, says "I am eagerly anticipating the implementation of ICE Desktop. The application has been proven in many other Trusts and I feel it will make a very positive contribution to patient care within North Cumbria."

One of the benefits of ICE Desktop is that it provides the mechanism to allow users from surrounding areas to access its services. Within the North of England, ICE Desktop is currently implemented or in the process of being implemented in over 40 Trusts.

Anglia Healthcare Systems Ltd is pleased to announce the imminent release of full interoperability within the INPS Vision 3 GP practice system. This will be welcome news to the large number of Vision 3 practices who use the services of Trusts running the ICE Desktop application.

By incorporating interoperability into the Vision 3 system, it will allow practice users to seamlessly connect to the Trust based ICE Desktop. There is no requirement to search for a patient or to log onto a separate system as all of the required information is automatically passed. Having connected to ICE Desktop the user is able to make requests, view the patient’s results, view discharge letters as well as download copies of Trust generated results.

Dr David Morris, an INPS Vision practice user, has been testing the functionality by connecting to both the North East Wales NHS Trust and the Countess of Chester NHS Trust. "The seamless transfer from my practice system to ICE Desktop has allowed me quick and easy access to the full result history of my patients. Combine this with the ability to download copies of reports and accurate requesting I could not imagine working any other way"

Caroline Smith, Commercial Product Manager for INPS says "The forthcoming release of the Vision/Anglia interoperability is something that will be of great benefit to Vision practices. From a desktop within the practice, a test request will be made directly from within Vision Consultation Manager into Anglia ICE and written straight back into Vision, reducing manual data entry! In addition to this, practices will have access to a patient’s complete test history, which includes tests performed outside the practice i.e. Trusts"

By introducing interoperability to the Vision system, INPS join Emis, TPP, Healthy Software and Seetec in allowing GPs direct access to ICE Desktop. There are currently over 1500 GP practices currently connecting to ICE Desktop and to date over 7 million requests have been made through the application installed in almost 100 NHS acute Trusts.

Another most welcome development is from The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) with their SystmOne practice system. TPP have made available the functionality within SystmOne to receive the Kettering XML discharge message. This allows GP practices to receive clinical correspondence including immediate discharge letters in an electronic format in the same way pathology results are currently received. There is also a requirement for the Trust to send the messages using either ICE Desktop or Anglia Labcomm.

For more information on any of the above please contact sales@ahsl.com

There are many installations of ICE Desktop order communications that follow, rightly so, a traditional pattern of configuration, placing standard tests in a convenient format for quick access – and that’s it.

But occasionally when imagination takes over up comes a configuration of ICE that reveals the flexibility of the software and its ability to present a service in a novel way. For an example of this you could do no better than admire the wristband print facility configured by North Bristol NHS Trust ….. 10,001 of them produced so far and still counting!

When Rachael Hoare became responsible for implementing the ICE system at North Bristol she identified an opportunity to set an order in ICE Requesting to print demographic details to a wristband template. And that’s what she went ahead and did!

Rachael set up a special requesting page holding the single order “Print Wristband”. Since all patient demographics are passed to ICE from PAS, upon selecting the test and validating in the normal way, the order can be processed as an instruction to a special wristband printer to run off the finished article ready for wearing – the picture below tells it all. The current print rate is almost 2,000 wristbands per week.

If you have any imaginative uses of ICE order communications do let us know.

Due to continuing development and feature enhancements we have had to amend the system requirements for workstations utilising our ICE Desktop product line with effect from the September 08 release.

Please click here to read an article from our Development Manager which provides full details.

Any site wishing to upgrade to the September 08 release must ensure that the workstations of their user community meet these new minimum requirements before scheduling their upgrade through their Implementation Specialists.

ICE Desktop meets demand for secondary care setting order communications interoperability.

Following a short development alliance between Anglia’s interoperability specialists and Ascribe personnel, the Company is pleased to announce that its ICE Desktop application can now present a dynamic order communications screen interface to Symphony, Ascribe’s Emergency Care IT system.

This upgrade to the respective ICE and Symphony systems has been achieved at West Middlesex Hospital, having gone live Friday 30th May and to schedule.

The interoperability development uses a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web service to enable the Symphony user to call up the ICE Desktop order screens to place requests for blood tests electronically. Symphony sends both the users identification and patients’ hospital number to ICE to facilitate a rapid and secure electronic transaction. After recording the orders in ICE the user is returned to the Symphony desktop to continue with the selected patient.

There is an emerging trend to use ICE Desktop in this way in secondary care settings and this work with Ascribe represents a pioneering example, presenting the Symphony user with a number of benefits such as reducing data entry duplicates and improving the management of data integrity to provide more reliable reporting services. Given that a third party system can present web services ICE has the potential to interoperate with numerous hospital based applications much as it has already done so with the majority of primary care GP practice system suppliers. Individuals interested in learning more of this approach should contact Anglia’s Norwich office: sales@ahsl.com

Industry acknowledgement

Symphony is Ascribe's Emergency Care solution and is used by Emergency Departments and Minor Injuries Units, it is a PC-based Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system designed to improve patient healthcare by providing clinicians and clerical staff with a comprehensive information access & retrieval IT solution. The system can operate either on a stand-alone basis or it can be integrated into existing computer systems. Symphony allows departments to monitor patient's progress, allocate resources and track performance targets.

About ICE Desktop

ICE Desktop is Anglia’s web browser application for clinical requesting, reporting and general ordering of provider services for use in hospital settings and primary care practices. It has become widely available to NHS organisations frequently as a stand-alone system but increasingly sought to combine with existing clinical systems and resources beyond the usual Pathology and Radiology remits.

A problem to solve…

Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust recently moved over to a new Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) but the transition led to the loss of their old Phlebotomy Management Software. In seeking a solution to resolve this shortfall Trust IT and Pathology managers, Robert Lee and Stephen Harris, decided to address the issue by utilising eBooking and label printing functionality available within their ICE Desktop Requesting order communications software.

A process agreed…

Having installed ICE Desktop Requesting over past months the management team realised that additional features within the browser based software, such as the new release of e-Bookings service management, could be deployed to provide a workflow process for phlebotomy management. It was agreed that the following process would prevail:

• requests are booked into ICE Desktop e-Bookings
• when an order is placed a message is sent to the Trust’s results reporting portal showing clinicians there is an outstanding request for a patient to be bled on the next ward round
• phlebotomy management lists for each ward round are produced together with the required number of barcode labels for each request, and this information is made available to the phlebotomists
• phlebotomists proceed to bleed their patients on the ward round and acknowledge doing so within the ICE sample collection module
• an acknowledgment in ICE updates the request from ‘requested’ to ‘specimen collected’ and the order message is sent onto the LIMS.
• once receipted by the LIMS, the LIMS outputs a message to the results reporting portal to indicate that the sample is now in the Laboratory and is being processed

Some operational benefits…

In his assessment of the system Stephen Harris, Pathology Computer Manager at the Trust, has identified a number of operational advantages “ICE Desktop has been configured to assign the laboratory sample number to the sample when the request is made. As such, when the sample labels are produced they contain the laboratory sample number barcode. Hence, when the samples are returned to the laboratory, there is no requirement to re-label them. The order is imported into the LIMS and the samples sent for processing. Not only does this save a great deal of time, but it also reduces greatly the risk of mislabelling – the phlebotomy samples are only labelled directly at a patient’s bedside”.

He went on to state that “the phlebotomy summary sheet has all the information the phlebotomist requires to locate and bleed the patient - demographics, test information and blood tube information and, due to the real time PAS ADT feed provided to ICE, the summary sheet has the ward location as well as the room/bay information, which allows faster location of a patient”.

The way in which the labels workflow has been designed ensures that barcode labels produced contain not only the laboratory number, but a patient’s demographics and test information too. Additionally provided is information regarding to which tube a label should be applied so aiding to ensure the correct samples are received at the laboratory.

And the future….

The Pathology Department now has plans to expand on the use of ICE Desktop e-Booking functionality by using it to manage both Outpatients and GP phlebotomy needs. “We plan to book patients in to published ‘clinic’ slots thereby providing each patient with a timed appointment. It is anticipated this approach will help to solve issues around clinic overbooking and, by using the electronic appointments system in ICE will also help with monitoring our 18 weeks to treatment target”.

As a web based application ICE has also provided additional benefits. Walsall has a community wide network and the application can easily be accessed remotely to mange external clinics such as anticoagulant and diabetic clinics.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust is the most recent acute services Trust to go-live with the Anglia ICE Desktop Clinical Correspondence Module.

The Trust identified an immediate need for a solution to provide accurate, timely and appropriate discharge related clinical correspondence to the local GP community. Given that the Trust had previously implemented ICE Desktop for the provision of GP test requesting and results reporting services with considerable success, it was a logical decision to extend functionality of the web browser ICE service to resolve their needs.

Earlier, the Trust had identified a need to address the quality of clinical correspondence being produced by the MAU (Medical Assessment Unit) within the organisation. Producing over six hundred documents a week at this location, it was critical that such correspondence was legible, clinically accurate, complete and reached GPs in a good time. 
To achieve their goal the Trust added to ICE Desktop the Clinical Correspondence module as an upgrade to the system. This allowed the Trust to make available defined correspondence templates for completion by system users. Also, with the addition of a PAS PMI/ADT interface, automatic population of key episode information to a document template is enabled. A further component of each document template is a Pharmacy TTO (To Take Out) section, and by using this functional area of ICE Desktop the Trust has been able to implement a workflow process that satisfies strict requirements stipulated by the Pharmacy Department. As explained by Salim Badat an IM&T Programme Manager for the Trust;

“East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has begun to revolutionise the discharge process for patients, starting in the Medical Assessment Unit, by consolidating the complex information into one Electronic Discharge Document.  The project, which began in at the end of February 2008 standardises discharge information so that legible data about diagnosis, medication and repeat appointments can be inputted by nurses, pharmacists and consultants involved in a patient’s care.  This document can then be sent to the patient’s GP and district nurse (if required) in a clear, efficient and timely manner ahead of the discharge letter.”

By utilising the messaging functionality within ICE Desktop completed discharge documents are transmitted to GP practices via the same mechanism as existing Pathology results messages.  As Anglia’s Marketing Manager for this project, Dominic Dunn, has expressed;

“This joined-up approach with ICE Desktop produces clear, concise, standardised information and builds on existing information technology systems, preventing the need for mass retraining of staff.  The system replaces an old triplicate carbon copy system where GPs would receive the bottom copy which was virtually unreadable yet contained vital patient information about condition and medication. The system also contributes to increased safety in prescribing as it facilitates improved monitoring of prescriptions”.

Having gone live with the MAU unit the Trust is now looking to extend functionality across the whole hospital by the earliest opportunity – and save a lot of postage stamps in to the bargain!


For more information please contact Sales@ahsl.com

Click here to download the ICE Discharge Mailer (PDF)