NHS Wales successfully completed a major upgrade of the Welsh Laboratory Information Management System (WLIMS) over the weekend. This essential work, which had to be completed before the end of this month and had been planned months in advance, required downtime for the WLIMS overnight on Friday 11th through to the evening of Saturday 12th December. NHS Wales Informatics Service has been working with the supplier and the service over the course of the weekend and this week to support the transition of this upgraded solution into normal operations as planned.
During this time, arrangements were put in place to ensure minimal disruption to the Test Trace Protect Programme, with citizens continuing to be notified of their results from the English Lighthouse Labs and citizens with positive results will have been contacted as appropriate by the Contact Tracing teams.
Further work was required to restart the flow of the Lighthouse Lab results into the laboratory system, which then makes the result available as part of the Digital & Health Care Record in Wales. This work completed on Tuesday 15th December and the backlog of results had flowed into the WLIMS by 8am 16th December.
Unfortunately during this time, this data was not available for statistical reporting. All data and reporting are now up to date.
This work has not affected individuals receiving their COVID-19 test results and the contract tracing process being commenced.
First published: 17/12/20