Bridget Wilkins

Bridget Wilkins Histopathologist Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust

"Guy ’s and St Thomas ’ Hospital Trust in London was one of the first establishments to license its diagnostic archive of histopathology specimens as a research resource, as part of our HTA licence covering post mortem activities.

"The HTA helped considerably to clarify and support this process. Staff at the HTA have been responsive and flexible, and our recent inspection was useful in developing our Trust’s consent policies, which have now been fully upgraded to reflect HTA requirements for post-mortem examinations. Our interactions with the HTA inspection team were very positive and we received prompt feedback.

"HTA regulation is important because we need an efficient process to ensure that appropriate consent is sought from human tissue donors. We now have standard post mortem consent forms and fewer delays with this paperwork, which raises everybody’s confidence that appropriate procedures are being followed in a compliant manner.

"Professional confidence in the regulations governing human tissue storage for research is also important. For example, support from the HTA was very helpful for us in approaching our Trust management with proposals to licence our diagnostic archive for research and upgrade consent processes in line with this."