Centralizing quality management for nationwide compliance and efficiency

The challenge

Responsible for providing safe blood, tissue and organs to UK hospitals, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) symbolizes hope, life and extraordinary sacrifice.

Every one of NHSBT’s 5,500+ staff plays a part in saving and improving lives. As they continue to innovate and keep people safe, they must maintain compliance with rigorous regulations and streamline their processes with a centralized quality management system (QMS).

NHSBT previously faced challenges in quality management and efficiency:

• Different regions had varied processes for document control, equipment management, and corrective and preventive actions (CAPA), with some centers still using paper systems. 
• Demonstrating compliance with regulatory standards, like those from the MHRA, was challenging.
•  A fragmented QMS across sites hindered unified, scalable quality management and performance improvement.

The solution

NSHBT needed a QMS that would:

• Ensure consistent compliance with regulatory requirements across all UK sites with a digital system that would standardize processes. 
• Reduce the need for paper-based records with a national document control system. 
• Evolve with NHSBT’s growing needs as a scalable solution.

For these reasons, NHSBT partnered with Ideagen.

The outcome

This change enabled NHSBT to:

• Streamline compliance efforts and centralize quality record management with all UK sites working with the same system.
• Eliminate the use of paper-based records, speed up processes and enable faster incident resolution by transitioning to an electronic incident reporting system. 
• Support continuous organizational learning and improved donor and patient safety with the ability to review trends and conduct root cause analysis.

Results

The QA System Manager at NHSBT noted, “[Ideagen Quality Management] was the scalable solution which enabled all our sites to work with a single system, initially to manage our records, but eventually using it as a UK-wide quality management solution.”