Lack of insight into workings of testing laboratories persists, says Institute of Biomedical Science president
The failure to adequately share test results was one of the “biggest omissions” in the handling of the coronavirus crisis, the head of the Institute of Biomedical Science has said.
Allan Wilson told Research Professional News that while there had been “some improvement” in integrating the government’s lighthouse mega labs with existing NHS IT systems, particularly in Scotland, there were still concerns.
“This was overlooked when we started [testing for Covid-19],” he said. “The focus was: ‘Let’s just do the testing, let’s not worry about where the results are going to go.’ I think that’s now accepted as one of the biggest omissions in the early days [of the pandemic], and it’s been a really difficult struggle to retrofit the IT systems.
“But I think we are starting to win that battle now,” he said, adding that the situation on data-sharing was now “gradually improving”, even as “we still don’t have much of an insight into what is happening within these labs”.
A well-functioning test and trace system is widely seen as key to tackling the pandemic.
Wilson welcomed government plans to expand the number of lighthouse labs further to all the regions of England.
“What we are hearing is…one of the criteria for these labs is that they will have to be integrated with NHS IT systems before they start—not as a retrofit but as part of the commissioning process. So that is progress of sorts.”
However, he raised concerns about the sustainability of lighthouse labs, many of which rely on borrowed equipment and academic volunteers from universities and other research institutions.
“The government accepts that is not a long-term strategy, and that they have to either do something about employing these individuals or making labs permanent and getting somebody to run them,” said Wilson.
“But they haven’t come up with anything yet. We keep raising it with them and we get platitudes more than anything else.”