Digitising Pathology Referrals

Problem / Challenge

The business’s read was simple: falling referral volume, a leakage problem. The reality was actually multiple systems discretely failing across the journey.

1. The telehealth consultations half as likely to convert to a completed referral as face-to-face ones.
2. Referrals were printed, scanned, and emailed with no visibility into how many even landed.
3. Phlebotomists were handling a complex, unpredictable collections caseload with almost no support: no case visibility, thin training and patients arriving unprepared.

Approach

Discovery across the diagnostic journey with doctors, collection centres and patients surfaced insights that were used to shape two connected deliverables:

• A digital referral issued straight from the GP’s system to the patient’s phone replacing the print-scan-email chain; and
• A collections portal which provided staff tools paper-based tests never could. This resulted in no more handwritten labels, tube-by-tube draw order specific to the test panel, and accompanying test reference manual.

Testing revealed:

• That eReferrals had to work via SMS (not email or digital links) for patients without reliable data, with the code visible in the message itself.
• Patients also wanted to better understand the tests they’d been prescribed, not just receive them. That pushed the e-referral’s scope beyond delivery, into richer test information that included clearer prep instructions to help patients get ready for collection.

Outcome

A broad and ambiguous brief turned into a specific answer for the people writing referrals, patients, and the people standing in a small room all day drawing blood with sore hands and no computer. The work reached a phlebotomist and patient validated and pilot-ready proof of concept which was handed to the client’s internal teams to implement with a set of digitally mature centres lined up to pilot it.