As part of CCIO7 work streams, NHS England will be delivering the ability to share Pathology results across health and care. Within the scope of this work, we will define the information standards that form the basis of sharing Pathology test requests and results for all of England. 

The National Pathology and Diagnostics Information Standards work is split across a number of workstreams which you can find out more about below.

The Unified Test List (UTL) is a catalogue of SNOMED CT coded laboratory medicine test requests and results intended for use by pathology services and their users across the NHS.

SNOMED CT is the recognised NHS Standard for clinical data entry in electronic health and care records.

The Units of Measure (UoM) workstream analyses the current state and future needs for describing and reporting measured results in pathology, in order to deliver a solution that meets the need for computable pathology units of measure that are pragmatic and useable for those requesting, processing and receiving test results.

The Pathology Message Specification defines a set of HL7 FHIR profiles to support the electronic exchange of pathology test results. Together with the Unified Test List and standardised Units of Measure, the specification aims to provide an interoperable and machine-readable mechanism for sharing pathology test results.

The NHS England Pathology and Diagnostics team is taking a User Centred Design approach to formally identify user requirements for iterative development and testing of our products / future standards.

Education and Training materials that may be of use to you, together with links to other documents, videos and related resources. Please feel free to contact us with any ideas of other materials that you would like developing.

Find out how you can participate in the development and implementation of the information standards.

We have formed an implementation team of experienced professionals with specialist knowledge of FHIR, SNOMED CT and a proven track record of implementation in digital healthcare to work as part of the pathology programme.