SPST, Procurement, Commissioning and Facilities, Clinical, digital and Security

Supporting COVID-19 Testing and Test and Protect

A collaborative approach has been at the heart of work to enable nationwide access to COVID-19 testing and increasing testing capacity across Scotland – with teams across NSS working closely together across the organisation and with external partners to deliver this vital work.

The response required to tackle COVID-19 has meant that our people are working in totally different ways – taking on new responsibilities and complex challenges, working in new teams with new people, adapting hours or patterns of work – all while operating in a fast moving, ever-changing landscape. Our flexibility and willingness to adapt is a key strength of our workforce – which has been in strong evidence in our activity around testing access and capacity and in supporting Test and Protect.

Enabling access to testing
As part of the UK Government testing strategy, our COVID-19 response team supported the roll out of Regional Testing Centres and Mobile Testing Units (MTUs) across Scotland, working closely with the UK Government, Scottish Government and HM Forces – and latterly the Scottish Ambulance Service, who took over the running of the MTUs from HM Forces at the end of August.
Increasing testing capacity

Our teams from Programme Management Services, National Procurement and our Clinical Directorate have worked in partnership with the Scottish Government, the UK Government, Public Health Scotland, NHSScotland laboratories, the Scottish Microbiology and Virology Network, academia and industry to provide the necessary specialist advice, expertise and equipment required to rapidly increase testing capacity for COVID-19 which has helped get NHSScotland to where we need to be from a testing perspective to help manage COVID-19.

We’ve supported NHSScotland to increase its testing capacity and have worked with our colleagues in the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and academic institutions to help them quickly deploy their own laboratory resources.

National Procurement adapted quickly to provide real time solutions to NHSScotland during the pandemic. Activities range from purchasing capital equipment and lab consumables to securing additional lab capacity through Scotland’s academia and private industry. The team have been operating in an extremely hectic environment – with their negotiation skills fully utilised to secure a robust supply chain for analysers, swab testing kits, chemicals, trays and a range of other lab consumables in a marketplace where all of the aforementioned are on global allocation and every country is competing for their share.

Teams across our organisation are now focusing on supporting the establishment of three regional NHS testing hubs in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, which, when fully functional, will provide an additional 22,000 tests per day for NHSScotland.

Technical solutions for testing
Our Digital and Security (DaS) team developed a number of digital solutions for Test and Protect. The team created a central data hub for the collation and analysis of complex COVID-19 test (processing more than 959,000 test results to date), built a range of dashboards to give health professionals an up-to-date picture of COVID-19 infection rates across the country and designed Scotland’s contact tracing system on behalf of Public Health Scotland. The team managed the roll out of Office365 Microsoft Teams to 161,000 NHS staff – enabling us all to work in ways not possible before, which has been vital in keeping NHSScotland moving during the pandemic. DaS have worked at incredible pace over the past six months - delivering reliable, secure and scalable digital solutions that can be ramped up instantly if needed.

National Contact Tracing Centre
In the fight against COVID-19, contact tracing is used to identify close contacts of any individuals within 24 hours of a positive test result. NSS established and now manage Scotland’s National Contact Tracing Centre (NCTC) on behalf of our colleagues Public Health Scotland. The NCTC was set up in just six weeks, thanks to colleagues from our HR, Finance, Programme Management Services, Scottish Health Service Centre and Digital and Security teams. The centre is staffed by new recruits who join NSS and Public Health Scotland staff deployed from other areas to run the service.

The work around testing has been a massive collective effort, with much achieved in a short space of time. This is testament to the commitment, skills and professionalism of teams across NSS and our partners who are dedicated to supporting NHSScotland in protecting health and saving lives during these unprecedented times.

More info
Watch the videos about our work around testing and the work of our Digital and Security team.

About NSS
A connected partner at the heart of Scotland’s NHS, NSS provides national solutions which improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Scotland. Find out more about us by visiting our website or follow us on Twitter.