4 LEADING EDGE - 2022-1 On Thursday 2nd December 2021, at the Annual MediWales conference in Cardiff, Alpha Laboratories was declared the winner of the Partnership with NHS Award, sponsored by the Life Science Hub. This was in recognition of the industry partnership with the Clinical Biochemistry team at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (CTMUHB), resulting in the successful rollout of their symptomatic Faecal Immunochemical Testing (FIT) service. In 2018, Alpha Laboratories was the industry partner for CTMUHB Clinical Biochemistry team’s application for the Health Technology Award from the Bevan Commission. This allowed the Clinical Biochemistry department to develop a symptomatic FIT service, originally planned for rollout to primary care users in line with NICE DG30 guidance. The Clinical Biochemistry team from CTMUHB contacted and received feedback from several patient groups including Voluntary Action Merthyr Tydfil, North Wales Cancer Patient Forum, Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK. Developed with Patient Feedback Patient feedback was important to ensure that the patient packs developed in partnership with Alpha Laboratories were acceptable to the target patient group. These packs include the sample collection device alongside bespoke Instructions For Use and Patient Information Sheets designed to encourage compliance and correct undertaking of the test. Following the patient feedback Alpha Laboratories then worked in partnership with the Clinical Biochemistry team to develop a pack which met their requirements. Demonstration patient packs were provided to enable the Clinical Biochemistry team to present to the Primary Care cluster group meetings. Bilingual All Wales documentation was then created for use in the patient packs. HM-JACKarc Analyser The FIT test was established and verified using the HM-JACKarc analyser in CTMUHB and was accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation service (ISO 15189) in November 2018. Throughout this partnership, Alpha Laboratories has provided additional support for the pilot GP project, alongside ongoing service and application support for the full service roll out across several health boards who use the analytical service provided by CTMUHB. Since becoming fully UKAS accredited CTMUHB now runs FIT samples using the HM-JACKarc analyser provided by Alpha Laboratories for the Cwm Taf Morgannwg area, Swansea Bay UHB, Hywel Dda UHB, and the Swansea based CRaFT Study. Supporting Decreased Endoscopy Capacity In addition to the use of symptomatic FIT in primary care, FIT has also been used during COVID-19 to help support decreased endoscopy capacity. By using FIT to triage patients it can help reduce colonoscopy waiting lists, and by directing patients to more appropriate management e.g.outpatient review and more recently, the urgent cancer pathway and rapid diagnostic clinics. Partnership with the NHS Award In recognition of the successful rollout of the symptomatic Faecal Immunochemical Testing (FIT) service at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board Annual MediWales Innovation Awards Winners
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