Roche’s Cobas Academy tool aids York NHS trust

Roche has won praise from the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for the advantages offered by its Cobas Academy e-learning tool.

The trust has invested in the service to improve its staff's competence levels pertaining to the use of point-of-care (POC) testing equipment, thus helping it to comply with Clinical Pathology Accreditation standards.

A total of 85 Accu-Check Inform II blood glucose meters and six Cobas b221 blood gas analysers have been installed across the trust, making it vital that workers are able to receive training and retraining in a flexible manner.

Cobas Academy delivers this by eliminating the need for face-to-face teaching, allowing staff to receive training whenever they are able to fit it into their schedules.

The trust's POC coordinator Anne Penrice said: "It delivers the information for training: an exam, which provides reassurance that the users have learned sufficiently; re-certification; and then through Cobas IT 1000, we can also control whether users can access equipment."

Roche's Cobas range includes a wide range of products for pathology modernisation and support, including in vitro diagnostics laboratory systems, point of care and molecular diagnostics services.