Carole Gough
Senior Medical Scientist
BSc MSc FACSLM
Carole has worked in both public and private hospitals in the UK and Ireland. With over 20 years’ experience working across laboratory disciplines with a specialist role in Point of Care Testing.
Carole has also worked as a Medical Sales and Training Specialist for some of the largest diagnostic and healthcare companies in the world. such as Abbott, Danaher and United Drug.The roles, often overseeing and project managing simultaneous installs of multiple point of care devices in multiple sites to install IT connectivity software and train hundreds of staff in each organisation. I really believe in having a competent and confident workforce and I have seen the massive benefits of training in terms of derisking healthcare processes.
‘I set up ‘The POCT consultancy’ to support the integration of quality, low risk diagnostic testing beyond the hospital setting into the community healthcare landscape. I believe in joined up healthcare and eliminating silos. I believe in preventative healthcare and close monitoring of some of the most chronic healthcare conditions such as diabetes. I believe in taking the burden off the main hospital settings, I believe in connected healthcare systems and having data easily available for clinicians to evaluate and treat their patients in an integrated way.
Having worked in a lean thinking hospital, utilising evidence based practice to optimise processes gain efficiencies and effect cost savings, informs my approach. Working in multidisciplinary teams both in healthcare and the commercial sector has elevated my ability for stakeholder engagement. I am also an advocate of incident reporting cultures,structures and proactive risk assessment for continual improvement and lessons learned.
I believe in the power of point of care testing to disrupt traditional healthcare pathways and fundmentally improve patient care and outcomes. We have seen the crucial role decentralised diagnostic sampling and testing played in the COVID-19 pandemic and how quickly the healthcare system can mobilise to respond.
Recent Projects
Researched and wrote an insights report to a large diagnostic distributor on the COVID-19 landscape and potential future business opportunities in the market.
Set up a POCT COVID-19 testing laboratory from inception in a large Dublin private hospital in a short timeframe.
Clients said: 'We couldn't have done it without you' 'We got the whole project signed off with the clinical governance committee and are ready to start testing patients'
'Having you on board the project meant that the users utilised their POCT device really well, this embedded the use of the device, which translated into a robust service provision and continued use of the device'
This included;
- Laboratory design
- Devising laboratory workflows
- Laboratory equipment selection and kit out,
- Devising a training program for trainees and train the trainer
- Writing technical documentation such as standard operating procedures
- Compilation of Quality Management System framework
- Implementation of quality assurance strategy
- Risk assessment and Risk mitigation
Over the past several years we have worked with hospital stakeholders and have project managed installs of multiple POC and core lab analysers into several large HSE/NHS /private hospitals. Activities included scoping out the project, coordinating training, operator access, IT install and implementation of quality systems and verification.
Invited Speaker: Democratisation of Healthcare: COVID as a catalyst for Change for Alphalake AI
Invited
Expert speaker on POC and medical devices
Invited Speaker Risk Management in Point of Care Testing. POC Conference 2023
Published Pathology in Practice Monthly Magazine: Risk management in Point of Care Testing: Learning from Industry Standards.