Laboratory Information Systems
A laboratory information system, or LIS, is a software program that provides all the basic functionality needed for a clinical laboratory, whether that laboratory is hospital-based or a standalone commercial laboratory facility. Various components of the LIS will handle patient check-in, order entry, results entry, physician and patient demographics, specimen processing, and have some level of reporting ability.
Legacy laboratory information systems are typically homegrown, that is, they were developed within the organization 20 or 30 years ago, or were purchased ”off the shelf.” Homegrown systems and legacy systems often have problems with connectivity, scalability and flexibility, especially as technology changes within the laboratory and healthcare industry. Off-the-shelf products often force laboratories to modify their workflow to adapt to the LIS, rather than the other way around. Also, numerous LIS vendors have gone out of business or shifted their focus to other areas in the last two decades. Often legacy LISes utilize multiple databases, which create a great deal of difficulty with database interfaces and data synchronization.
Newer LISes are increasingly able to offer what laboratories need: modular-based systems with customizable functionality, scalability and a high level of adaptable connectivity for both institutional electronic medical records (EMRs) and physician access. Laboratories also require a LIS to to interface with the laboratory’s instrumentation, which allows patient results to be directly entered into the database and then into the EMR; Web-based order entry/result inquiry; and workload balancing. The LIS often has non-clinical functionality such as workflow monitoring and billing services.
In addition, these systems need to be customizable, be able to effectively and easily interface with both the institution’s electronic health record, the laboratory’s automated equipment, and provide Web-based access for physicians.
The environment for health information technology, specifically LISes, requires adherence to a number of national and international standards including CLIA, CCHIT, ANSI, HL7, HITSP, and LOINC.
Medicare Pays Doctors To Switch to E-Prescribing
CEO SUMMARY: It’s a major step on the road to integration of healthcare informatics. During the next few years, the Medicare program is offering financial incentives to encourage office-based physicians to adopt e-prescribing. This is a positive development for local laboratori…
E-Prescribing Functions that Labs Can Offer Office-Based Physicians
IN RESPONSE TO MEDICARE AND PRIVATE PAYER efforts to increase physicians’ use of e-prescribing, 4Medica, Inc., of Culver City, California, was one of the first laboratory informatics vendors to add an effective e-prescribing capability to its lab test order and results reporting sy…
Warning: Three-Fold Rise In EMR Adoption Predicted
CEO SUMMARY: Doctors are responding to news that up to $20 billion in federal funding is now available to help pay for their adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems. Demand for EMRs is expected to increase three-fold in the coming years. That means clinical labs and p…
Phlebotomy Automation Likely To Be Next Trend
CEO SUMMARY: Here’s a prediction that automation of work processes for phlebotomy, specimen collection, and specimen transport may be the next trend. Unfolding developments in the United States are creating a situation parallel to what was seen in Japanese hospital laboratories more tha…
Health Record Databanks Are Different Than RHIOs
CEO SUMMARY: Forget CHINs from the 1990s and RHIOs from this decade. The future of regional health data repositories may turn out to be a patient-controlled model, often called a “Health Record Bank” (HRB). Here is the lab industry’s first look at this nascent movement. HRBs are und…
Getting Connected: Labs Find Value in EMR Links
CEO SUMMARY: As physicians deploy electronic medical record (EMR) systems, they quickly ask their laboratory for electronic results reporting directly into the EMR. Later, these doctors will ask for electronic test orders from their EMR. Savvy labs are using this opportunity to develop cl…
Misys Health Restructures By Selling Two Divisions
CEO SUMMARY: Misys Healthcare Systems of London, England, has sold its diagnostic LIS systems to Vista Equity Partners of San Francisco, California, for $381.5 million. The deal raises several questions, particularly for those labs currently running Misys laboratory information systems (L…
Labs Are Finding Ways to Link Variety of EMRs
CEO SUMMARY: Three speakers at the Executive War College last month in Miami, Florida, offered case studies on how labs are developing electronic interface gateways between their LISes and EMRs in the offices of client physicians. Physician clients frequently want lab data to be among the…
Emerging Global Trends in How Labs Are Using “Distributed Computing”
“In several different countries, laboratories already use ‘distributed computing’, in the form of a single LIS data center that provides informatics services to as many as 25 laboratories in a region. The trend is to increase interoperability and portability of the i…
Why Labs Will Increase their Use of Middleware and Informatics
“Across the globe, laboratories face similar and significant challenges in how they use information technology and middleware to solve problems.” —Jacques Baudin, Executive Vice President, Technidata America Medical Software CEO SUMMARY: Midd…
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Volume XXXII, No. 6 – April 21, 2025
Now that a federal judge has vacated the FDA’s LDT rule, The Dark Report analyzes the judgement and notes the various steps the FDA could take in response. Also, lab testing at pharmacies is proving to be less successful than was once anticipated.
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