The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust is a Specialist Oncology Centre seeking to appoint a supplier who will be able to deliver an Automated Blood Transfusion solution using column agglutination techniques.

The service is provided to inpatients, outpatients and day cases, supporting a busy surgical unit (on the Chelsea site), a large HPC-transplantation unit (on the Sutton site) and routine top-up transfusions for medical oncology patients.

There is a full haematology and blood transfusion service at both sites site operating 24 hour 7 day cover.

The blood sciences department currently holds full UKAS accreditation under ISO 15189 and is enrolled in all relevant UK EQA schemes for tests conducted within its routine laboratories

The Trust is asking service providers to deliver a Contract which will:

— install and maintain duplicate automated analytical systems on each site for the processing of samples for Blood Group and Antibody screen and associated tests,

— allow the analysers to operate in stand-alone (no IT connectivity) mode for the initial phase of use within the live laboratory environment,

— provide the necessary IT connectivity to integrate the equipment into the yet-to-be-confirmed Laboratory Information Management System via suitable middleware, Instrument Manager if possible and manage the data produced by the analysers.

— provide for all reagents and consumables including comprehensive Internal Quality Control (IQC), running on all systems up to three times daily,

— provide other services such as practical support for initial verification and implementation, training, contract management support, reagents and other consumables supply, an optional inventory management solution, and value added items such as marketing and service improvement.

— allow for new services which may come online during the course of the contract,

— the methodologies on offer at both sites must be the same. The Chelsea site in particular is severely restricted for space and so solutions that can provide the required throughput with the minimum of footprint are sought.