ICE Order Communications Software

Joining primary, secondary and community care to optimise diagnostic ordering and result reporting

Our Order Communications Software, ICE (Integrated Clinical Environment), supports multiple diagnostic specialties including pathology, radiology, cardiology, and endoscopy. It bridges the technology divides in a variety of areas and provides you with an electronic request channel that you can order diagnostic procedures and tests upon.

ICE Statistics

93million

Requests

Processed on ICE every year

71%

Market share

NHS OCS Primary care market across the UK

119

Trusts

Routinely using CliniSys OCS solutions

End to End Solution

ICE is a web-based requesting and reporting system relied upon by thousands of healthcare professionals across primary, secondary and community care. The application supports all platforms including PC and mobile devices. The primary use of ICE is to provide you with an electronic requesting platform to order diagnostic tests and procedures within both primary and secondary care. ICE is heavily relied upon by all our customers for pathology-based tests, and is also proven with a wide range of diagnostic specialisms including radiology, cardiology, endoscopy and a variety of other auxiliary services.

Widespread integration

ICE integrates with all the key clinical systems around laboratory, radiology, mental health, EPR, primary care and sexual health, with over 35% coverage in NHS Trusts for acute ordering. This gives you the freedom to rely on best of breed systems for your individual disciplines, while taking full advantage of a single, coordinated test and reporting system across your health system or Trust.

The ICE product suite provides additional functionality to make it easier for you to manage patient information efficiently and effectively, including:

Electronic view
- View of the patients’ records including diagnostic test, procedure or examinations information. Additional information can be presented including patient alerts and clinical documentation such as discharge summaries
Assessment and escalation of results
Ability to manage patients
- Generation of patient lists based on clinician, location, clinical team or patient status
Refer patients between departments
Generation and transmission of results and clinical documentation including discharge summaries to primary care
Support for sample collection

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Share data safely with OpenNet

ICE OpenNet allows you to see requests and reports from connected ICE systems in use at other NHS Trusts. This allows you to create a diagnostic hub to support patients that are under the care of multiple NHS Trusts, which is increasingly common for patients with chronic conditions. ICE OpenNet provides a full view of the patient regardless of where the results reside and ensures a complete diagnostic history without the need for repeat tests.

Reducing paper workflows

ICE removes the need for paper-based workflows and referrals which often lead to a fragmented view of the patient record or even loss of data. Our advanced interfacing ensures good quality, fully audited data for all services. The more data that is available in each ICE, the more patient history becomes available to share across disciplines and regions through ICE OpenNet, according to your specific requirements.

Underpinning national NHS services

ICE is used by practices across the UK to order a wide range of tests for patients and it can be easily configured and connected for national services. Currently ICE is widely used as part of NHS England’s HPV screening service.

Supporting Community and Mental Health Services

ICE connects healthcare services through interoperability, providing a centralised ordering and result reporting platform, integrating the care environment. The interop connection allows users to launch their patient in context to a connected ICE system.

ICE supports result lookup, result forwarding and result transfer via NHS Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) to meet the needs of all service users. In addition to results, other clinical correspondence such as discharge letters can also be shared to primary care.

ICE Portal

The ICE Portal offers electronic ordering and reporting to wider social care settings (care homes, prisons, schools) where no such system is available. The portal feeds the underlying ICE system, which in turn feeds the relevant hospital systems, such as a LIMS – joining the dots when it comes to having full traceability of the testing that is occurring in all care settings.

Key features

Requesting

One of the primary functions of the ICE product is the requesting element. This enables diagnostic services, such as, pathology or radiology within your organisation, to provide a service catalogue to your trust/network/region, so they can request diagnostic tests and/or procedures for their patients. This can extend outside your organisation so other healthcare service providers, such as primary care, can request electronically. ICE requesting features enable you to:

Capture greater clinical information at the point of request
Manage demand, avoiding unnecessary duplication of tests and patients being overexposed e.g. in the case of repeat radiological examinations
Restrict requests of certain tests/exams to the appropriate personnel/departments
Integrate with ‘downstream systems’, giving the requester a real-time status of their request
Configure the workflow to assist end users e.g. include sets of tests that relate to specific clinical conditions

Reporting

ICE allows you to receive reports from downstream systems, such as Laboratory, Radiology, Cardiology and Endoscopy. These reports are displayed within the application and can be interacted with by users with the appropriate permissions. With ICE reporting, you can:

Integrate with a wide array of third-party systems to receive reports and display these within the system e.g. LIMS, RIS, cardiology, endoscopy
Use access permissions to control who can see which reports
Hide sensitive information such as genitourinary medicine (GUM) reports
View full audit trails for each report ensuring all interactions with that report are recorded
Sign off results electronically with the ‘Results Acknowledgement’ feature, ensuring all results are viewed and acted upon
Generate notifications (SMS and Email) based on an array of criteria, including, abnormal status, % increase or decrease, n fold increase or decrease
Generate various report types including cumulative views and graphing

Sample Collection

ICE provides an in-built sample management solution enabling clinical users to utilise handheld devices for sample collection, reducing sample errors, enabling faster patient discharges and improved outcomes.

Sample collection is a critical step within the pre-analytical process and errors at this stage such as patient misidentification or mislabelling can cause significant issues. The resulting impact from errors made in sample collection include:

Transfusion related morbidity and mortality
Medication errors
Misdiagnosis
Delay in patient care
Re-bleeding due to rejected samples

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More Reasons to Choose ICE

Medical team analysing MRI scans on digital tablet

Clinical Decision Support – Radiology

ICE is integrated to MedCurrent iRefer CDS, a solution that supports clinicians with real-time, evidence based-guidelines at the point of care. Helping clinicians to reduce inappropriate imaging and improve outcomes.

Our CDS partner, MedCurrent, has worked with the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) and have incorporated over 300 evidenced guidelines supplemented by expert medical and radiological advice, guiding GPs, referring clinicians, and other healthcare professionals to the most appropriate imaging investigation(s) or intervention for any diagnostic or imaging problem into the iRefer CDS platform.

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Service Provider Lists (Referrals)

Our Service Provider Lists (SPLs) module is perfect for departments that do not have the capability to receive inbound and produce outbound messages e.g. physiotherapy.

It allows the user to make a request (generally a referral for these areas), which can then be reviewed by the receiving department, they can then choose to accept, reject, or reroute the referral to a more appropriate department, additionally it can be sent back to the referrer for more information.

Doctor consulting patient on test results on phone

Clinical Letters

Create and complete clinical correspondence such as patient discharge letter using templates and share easily with other care settings.

Letters are pre-populated with patient information, while clinical information is generally added manually. ICE letters integrate with other systems such as pharmacy solutions to import medications such as To Take Out, admission medications and allergy information reducing the need and risk of manual entry. Completed letters from third party systems can also be received within ICE and sent onwards to the Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) and the patient’s GP.

Female doctor in consultation with patient

Clinical Forms

Clinical forms allow you to create custom templates that can be attached to both a patient record and a request made through the requesting module. Common use cases include templates for Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) assessments and Family Origin Questionnaire.

Doctor wearing a protective face mask working in a surgery during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Patient Lists

Generate and manage static or dynamic patient lists, based on various criteria. Patients are normally added to lists based on the analysis of received reports e.g. MRSA/COVID-19 positive patients upon receipt of a positive MRSA swab result or COVID-19 test. Additionally lists can be created based on clinician, location and even linked to outpatient clinics.

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For more information about how our ICE Order Communications Software can improve your workflow, please get in touch.