NHS Blood and Transplant - Transplantpath

Effective collaboration was key to success in building this piece of technology. Apadmi and NHSBT worked together to pool expertise and resources to create TransplantPath. This collaborative approach allowed both teams to develop a tailored solution that addressed the unique challenges faced by transplant professionals. The pair also included Microsoft in initial early architectural design discussions, to see how best to leverage their latest technologies to come up with a reliable, scalable solution. Throughout development, key stakeholders were kept in the loop, constantly assessing and giving feedback on Apadmi’s progress to ensure it aligned with NHSBT's objectives and met the needs of transplant professionals.

Transplant Path was delivered using fixed price phases that aligned to the Government Service Standard. Challenges included having to work with stakeholders outside of NHSBT, which meant we created an extended research and discovery activities to hold 30+ User Research sessions to engage with a diverse set of clinical stakeholders. Another key obstacle identified was the need for a custom camera control to ensure we could manage image quality and security. This extended development time, however we managed to eliminate the impact on NHS project budget. We took key lessons from the camera control experience, introducing technical spiking or prototyping (as used in DonorPath) for new technology features.

The result is a product that enables quick decision-making by simplifying the process of accepting or declining organ donations, being able to record media to support organ donation offers, and finding the right donor for recipients. We have introduced a new way of working to allow surgeons to assess organ quality in advance of the organ arriving, as well as the use of unique custom camera control technology to enable images and videos to be taken at the right quality in a clinical setting. We have also laid the foundations to share images with OrQA (Organ Quality Assessment) to support the technology and clinical development of a pioneering new AI method to assess the quality of organs for donation - images and data captured by TransplantPath are being used to support algorithm training and development.

Although in the early stages of launch, Transplant Path is already making a big impact, with even greater success to come. With over 1200 unique users since launch, and over 9000 images taken since launch, it is clear that specialists within NHSBT are swiftly adopting and utilising the new technology.

Transplant Path enables an average time saving of 29.5 minutes for every organ offer, and specifically saving 50 minutes on average for each kidney through removal of manual processes. This equates to a predicted 302 more transplants taking place per year, meaning quicker decisions, better organ utilisation rates, and ultimately, more lives saved. Feedback from NHSBT staff has been overwhelmingly positive with the product already being praised for its user-friendly interface, quick access to information, and high-quality images.