Simon Brewer

South West London Pathology (SWLP) has been working with bioMerieux to set up and interface Virtuo incubators at Croydon University Hospital (CUH) so that blood culture samples for sepsis can be incubated on site within the national target time of four hours.

On Wednesday (4 April), the Croydon blood transfusion service went live with the Immucor system. Immucor is the leading provider of transfusion and transplantation diagnostic products in the UK. The new system is fully automated and has high accuracy.

In line with national guidance, Hepatitis B and C screening has now been introduced at Croydon Hospital. The purpose of the initiative is to identify cases of these diseases in patients who may not know they have them, so treatment can be offered early.

Immunology services at St George’s and Epsom and St Helier Hospitals are merging into one service, which will be located at St George’s Hospital. This is taking place during October and November.