Netcall | Customer Story

Cornwall and Isles of Scilly trials LAMP testing

The Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust trials LAMP testing with Liberty Create

Project highlights

Built an app to record COVID-19 test results on mass
14 days for a full working product
Real-time reporting
Easy to use interface

Offering the potential for mass testing

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) employs five thousand people at three hospitals: the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, the West Cornwall Hospital at Penzance and St Michael’s Hospital at Hayle. Healthcare standards are very high in these hospitals — where a recent survey showed their patients were very happy with the care they received.

Early in 2020, the Trust was chosen to be a Phase 2 trial site for the LAMP test — a simple all-in-one saliva test that detects COVID-19 and gives results in 30-45 minutes. It offered huge potential for mass testing.

Naturally, the Trust already had COVID-19 testing in place to be sure staff were safe to be at work. All of their staff, plus students and contract staff working in the hospitals, were regularly taking lateral flow tests. Everyone was entering their test results on a system based on Microsoft 365. This was working well, but the system wasn’t built to allow the Trust to record LAMP test results too.

It could have been a crisis – the LAMP trial was starting in just a few weeks.

Literally weeks to launch LAMP tests

The Trust’s e-Health Transformation Manager, Ian Nicholls, could see a way to get a new test system working very quickly. He knew about Netcall’s Liberty Create platform and how is it used to build apps very rapidly — in some cases ten times as fast as usual.

Working to tight timelines, the Trust approached Netcall to see if they could build a new solution together on the Liberty Platform, and have it ready in time for the first LAMP tests.

The Royal Cornwall NHS Trust and Netcall worked together to design a solution aligned to the hospitals’ needs. Amazingly it only took 14 days to build their first working product.

The Trust’s new ‘C19 App’ was online before the LAMP test programme went live. RCHT staff started using it to submit their lateral flow test results. By May 2021, the majority of people working at the Trust were using the new app, with 4,620 users registered on the system.

We received fantastic support from the Netcall project team and the solution was delivered ahead of the lab being ready. Our own agile collaboration approach meant we could identify any fixes we needed very fast. The turnaround and speed of change was really good. We enjoyed a very a-typical supplier experience.

— Ian Nicholls, eHealth Transformation Manager, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

Self-testing and submitting results

Each person takes their own test, then logs in to the portal to submit their lateral flow test result online. If it is a LAMP test, they submit their test samples by scanning the barcode with their phone. Then they drop the sample at a designated collection point, where it is picked up and returned to the lab for testing.

The lab uses these barcodes when they process the samples. This feature saves time and makes testing more accurate.

A secure portal for all

Hospital staff send their results from any device. They don’t need to download a particular app — they just use their own phone to log on to a secure portal and enter the result, which saves time.

The system has two-factor authentication to keep it secure, ensuring results are always entered by the correct person.

Staff can opt in or out of the system’s notifications and they can use SMS or email to choose how they want to interact with the system.

Real-time reports for rapid contact tracing

The best way to prevent the virus from spreading is to identify people quickly if they need to self-isolate. So as soon as the lab has the results, the system automatically triggers a message to each person. This is supporting contact tracing across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

The system provides test results in real-time and the hospital’s staff can see their own test results as soon as they are ready.

The laboratory team uses the barcodes to match each sample to the member of staff it came from. They can see everyone’s samples and results on the system, and can see immediately if there are any queries or any causes for concern.

It’s flexible for managers and supervisors too

The Trust’s management can also see test results in real-time. They have a simple interface where they can manage staff testing and view test results, by organisation and by department.

If they need to add a new group of people, there is a quick way to do this by uploading their records in bulk. They can also edit notification messages and emails the system sends at any time.

Self-testing-and-submitting-LAMP-results

A great outcome

The Trust’s reporting of lateral flow tests increased significantly from May 2021, when the C19 app went live.

The next phase of this project is to integrate the C19 app with the laboratory machine. This will cut out the need to scan the samples and import the test results as a CSV file.

We saw an increase in the number of tests recorded, simply because the C19 app made it easier for staff to send us their test results.

Using Liberty Create has opened our eyes to the potential of low-code. As we work with Netcall across a wide range of transformational activities, we will consider how else this can be used.

— Ian Nicholls, eHealth Transformation Manager, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust