Our team of diagnostics experts support NHS organisations to improve their diagnostics processes and implement technologies that deliver efficiencies and improved patient outcomes.
The diagnostics landscape in the NHS
Over 1.5 billion diagnostics tests are carried out in England every year to confirm or rule out health conditions and disease. They are an essential factor in diagnosis and support screening and monitoring of long-term conditions.
But diagnostics services are under immense pressure.
In 2019, the NHS Long Term Plan recognised the need for “radical investment and reform” of diagnostics services in England to keep up with demand. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it accelerated the use of digital diagnostics services but also highlighted the fundamental challenges in the provision of diagnostics and image sharing processes across England.
The Richards’ Review of diagnostics services for NHS England set out a number of recommendations to address these challenges, including new service delivery models, improvements to digitisation and connectivity, growth of the imaging workforce, and an expansion of digital diagnostics equipment and facilities.
In 2021, the Government committed nearly £250 million of capital investment to modernise diagnostics and help tackle patient waiting lists and invested £2.3 billion over three years to create 100 community diagnostics centres across England. This investment provides the financial backing to accelerate digital diagnostics practice, but barriers remain.
Collective diagnostics experience and knowledge
In this environment of rising demand and technological change, our diagnostics experts have supported many NHS organisations to develop diagnostics services that streamline practices and improve patient outcomes.
The team’s collective experience is unrivalled and offers NHS organisations a proven and trusted resource for transforming their diagnostics services.
Let’s meet the team:
Robin has 30 years’ experience of senior technical and commercial management in the fields of healthcare information, imaging, and pathology. He uses clear strategies based on sound technical knowledge to help organisations adapt to rapidly evolving technologies. Robin is an active participant in UK and international healthcare standards development, including Industry Co-Chair of IHE-UK, participating in DICOM Working Groups 23 AI, 26 Pathology and 27 Web Services, and a member of HL7 UK.
Felix is a diagnostics expert and enterprise architect working across England. He authored the NHS England South East diagnostics strategy and design, and the national digital diagnostics 2028 vision. Felix is currently leading across four networks on network-wide interoperability design, a unified radiology and pathology integrated clinical environment (ICE) roadmap, and a new order communications product and structured results repository design.
Alan Reid
Alan brings a wealth of laboratory experience and expertise as an accomplished pathology IT specialist. He has a deep understanding of the intricacies involved in managing and deploying complex laboratory systems, plus an extensive knowledge of system configuration management and order communication. His structured mindset ensures that key requirements are accurately interpreted before being deployed to the system. This valuable skillset enables Alan to deliver high-quality results with precision and efficiency, making him an exceptional asset to any laboratory team.
Emily Petow
Emily is an exceptional senior biomedical scientist with extensive experience delivering complex laboratory transformation projects. Her calm and composed demeanour enables her to translate her colleagues’ laboratory requirements into technical requirements within a laboratory system effortlessly. She brings with her a wealth of experience in deployment and clinical expertise, which is instrumental in ensuring the success of any complex healthcare IT deployment.
Hannah Chubb
Hannah’s communications expertise is a key enabler of any healthcare IT deployment. She recently created a communication toolkit for a complex diagnostic deployment of a laboratory solution, ensuring that all key stakeholders were informed and communicated with effectively. With her help, our clients were able to achieve a smooth transition and deliver success.
Ash is Ethical’s Head of Delivery and has a passion for delivering large-scale programmes that make a difference nationally. He is currently programme managing a complex diagnostic Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) implementation across the Southern Counties Pathology Network to deliver the vision of a single network LIMS. Ash is a registered Pharmaceutical Society pharmacy technician and has a background in clinical safety, which he applies to the safe delivery of healthcare IT programmes.
Project management team
Our project management experts Liz Simms, Ellie Lucas and Heather Payne provide top-quality support to ensure projects are delivered on time, to budget and achieve their objectives.
The team has expertise in Agile and Waterfall project management methodologies – and has even developed its own super-efficient project management office (PMO) toolkit to deliver the best results for our clients.
Get in touch
If you’d like to benefit from the unrivalled expertise of our diagnostics team, contact Ash Tailor at ash@ethicalhealthcare.org.uk to discuss how we can support you.