The Health Protection Agency London Region Laboratory At King`s College Hospital

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) is an independent body that protects the health and wellbeing of the population and works alongside the NHS to provide specialist support in communicable disease. The HPA's Microbiology Regional Network provides diagnostic and advisory microbiology, virology and infection control services to NHS Trusts, as well as to the Primary Care Trusts and Health Protection Units.

The Departments of Microbiology and Virology (South London Specialist Virology Centre) - which comprise the London Region Laboratory - process about 400,000 specimens per annum. Most of our workload arises from patients at King's College Hospital, including those cared for by tertiary referral services such as haemato-oncology, liver transplantation and neurosurgery. We also provide Virology services further afield through contracts with NHS Trusts throughout the South East. The laboratory is approved by the Health Professions Council for training Biomedical scientists and by the Royal College of Pathologists for training Medical Microbiologist and Virologists. We are committed to continuing professional development for all staff.

We offer a comprehensive portfolio of bacteriology, virology, parasitology and mycology diagnostic tests underpinned by readily available clinical advice (including out-of-hours) from our six Consultants. We continually update our test portfolios in order to respond to the needs of clients, optimise patient management and address emerging infectious diseases. Through a programme of research, development and technology transfer our Clinical Scientists have provided in-house real-time PCRs using the Corbett Rotor-Gene, Roche LightCycler and Biorad iCycler and in-house sequencing; these are available at competitive prices. There are plans for the laboratory to expand its molecular bacteriology profile and mycobacteriology work over the next two years.

Click here to view full details of our range of specialist tests

http://kingspath.co.uk/tests/directory/

Note: Specific specialist test information sheets for Microbiology & Virology analyses are currently in development and are therefore not listed in our specialist test directory. These will be added in due course. In the meantime, please contact us for further details.