Everything you must know about a LIMS
Laboratories play an increasingly important role in providing timely and efficient care to patients. Patients and physicians rely heavily on results produced by diagnostic and images labs to proceed with the treatment process. Time is a crucial factor – not just for the critical patient cases, but also for the overall health of the healthcare system itself. It is high time the global healthcare community thought about this seriously and took concrete measures to remove the sluggishness and inefficiency that often persists in laboratory and hospital departments.
Laboratory Management Information Systems (LIMS) are pushing boundaries for what laboratories can achieve. Information – both communication and management of it, is key to transforming the way labs work and collaborate with other stakeholders in the healthcare value chain. The current challenge in the overall health-scape is a lack of unification – departments function as isolated systems with little flow of information between them. The result is an incongruous system where patients are left to the mercy of personnel, oftenrunning from pillar to post for issues like billing, registration, sample collection, referencing and so on. What is needed is a seamless integration of various functions both inside a laboratory as well as with external applications like EMRs and EHRs, and various other stakeholders in the healthcare value chain to whoever such information may be useful.
A LIMS empowers labs to manage the continuous streams of data and convert it into actionable insights by making it available to the right person at the right time. It enables labs to make their patients feel assisted and comfortable from registration to specimen collection, to each and every point of contact till the sample is tested and the report is delivered. In fact, huge storage capabilities that come with a cloud based LIMS make it possible for labs to deliver extended services – such as looking up past results by the unique patient ID, of tests conducted several years ago in case a patient misplaces his copy.
Today,if you pick a random sample of leaders in the diagnostic laboratory market segment, you will notice a common pattern in the way all of them work. What differentiates a leading lab from the rest of its lagging peers is the way it deploys an IT system to enhance the quality and timeliness of its workflow at the same or even lesser cost!And that IT system is none other than a cloud based LIMS. On one hand, the LIMS allows labs to choose what they want with respect to hardware, operating systems and databases. On the other, it beautifully blends in with the architecture to fulfill the unique needs of each lab. So, what essentially happens is that the load of round the clock data maintenance is outsourced to a vendor who is adept in understanding the nuances of a lab business.
But this is not it. To fully appreciate how and why a cloud based LIMS is an excellent investment, you must understand the special areas that it can handle:
Functionalities
LIMS allows your lab to store and track every bit of information, share it with patients and physicians in real-time and convert it to actionable insights. All these benefits are available via a browser based deployment, completely configurable web services and external facing portals with the most comprehensive set of modular lab functionalities from which you can choose the ones that are most useful for your business.
Data management and integration simplified
Be it adding new data, updating old one or simply tracking it – data management is a piece of cake with a cloud based LIMS. The cloud ensures that data is always protected from security breaches or system crashes, always available, non-redundant yet shared among different departments. All that a laboratory staff must do is logon to the cloud to access it. Whenever lab personnel make any changes with the data, it is updated instantaneously across the whole lab including all its departments and centers.
The urgency being felt within the global healthcare community to push for EMR/EHR adoption poses new challenges for labs as far as data integration is concerned. In order for them to meet Meaningful Use requirements as well as for public-health reporting,physicians must be able to interface their EMR applications with their lab service providers’ LIMS for electronic lab test ordering and result reporting. The sooner labs make this transition, the better it is for their administrators to circumvent the daunting task of connecting with the diverse EMR systems used by their physician clients.
Overcoming the drawbacks of legacy systems
On paper, legacy laboratory information systems which were built using outmoded programming languages as long ago as the 1980s may be capable of providing integration services effectively. In reality, however, this approach significantly undermines the amount of work required in catering to HIPAA 5010 and ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM conversion. This problem is amplified when there are no IT personnel who are familiar enough to handle the new complexities of evolving the legacy systems. What most laboratories need today is to shun the legacy approach and invest in a next-generation LIMS. Unless labs act soon, they will find themselves spending huge resources for keeping their old systems updated as they become obsolete with every passing year. A state of the art LIMS like LabKernel works on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model safeguarding your lab from all these problems and thus giving excellent returns on investment in the long run.
Instrument interfacing
Old programming languages and hardware which make up current legacy systems are incapable of, or extremely cumbersome to interface with modern day lab equipment and instruments as well as with EMRs or browser based systems of any kind. On the contrary, modern day LIMS like LabKernel provides robust device interfacing capabilities for routine and special chemistry, hematology, immunology and microbiology instruments, and even capturing and reporting instrument errors back to the LIMS.
The time factor
One of the USPs of a good laboratory is its Turnaround Time (TAT). Without a robust and intuitive LIMS, a huge risk and tradeoff exists between time and reliability in producing results, as haste naturally makes humans more predisposed to committing mistakes – which could be in the form of entering wrong data, mismatching of specimen, inaccuracy in testing, tracking of samples, errors in reporting, etc. On the other hand, a cloud based laboratory management system not only shifts a majority of the load of work from humans to IT, by automating several tasks like updating of sample location and the procedure being performed, but also sends alerts in case there is a delay. This makes a huge positive impact on patient experience by enabling labs to guarantee them quality and reliability at the lowest possible TAT.
Scalability
Be it a lab with 20 users or a multi-national laboratory chain, a cloud based LIMS like LabKernel is infinitely scalable and flexible in terms of serving an ever increasing (or decreasing) number of users. Moreover, multiple language and currency support makes it an excellent investment for laboratories who may be toying with the idea of overseas expansion.
Customization and ease of use
Every clinical diagnostic laboratory has unique needs of its own. Not just the lab as a whole, but the different departments such as microbiology, chemistry, hematology, anatomic pathology and so on would typically have their exclusive IT demands. A LIMS not only customizes the software application for the lab as a whole, but for individual departments as well. LabKernel takes care of complex IT tasks at the back-end, while providing a smooth and user-friendly interface to the lab personnel.
Complete sample management
From point of care or home sampling, rejections and recollections (if any) to following the sample as it moves within the lab facility, a LIMS is agile in updating information and sharing it with the concerned people. As soon as a specimen is collected, lab technicians can assign it to the patient ID generated at the time of registration. Further, the LIMS tracks it to make sure that the sample was appropriately handled and tested by a qualified and trained technician. Device interfacing helps in capturing accurate information and attaching it with the patient record.
End to end support
An efficient LIMS allows you to choose the best from competing priorities and multi task to simultaneously carry out complex functions and operations. The modular units of a cloud based LIMS handle data for the most cutting-edge laboratory techniques and testing.
Platform independence
Every lab uses relational databases to record information. Now when adopting a LIMS, a concern may be whether the LIMS will be compatible with the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) it currently uses. A key attribute of a good LIMS is its independence from database platform and brand, which gives labs the freedom to continue to use their operating system, hardware and databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server in a variety of configurable network topologies.
Installation and maintenance costs
Most laboratories flinch at the idea of adopting an IT solution because of the general misconception that installation is a long and arduous task and maintenance is a lifelong cost. However, the situation is just the opposite; modern day LIMS comes with pre-configured implementation templates which can be installed quickly with minimum efforts in configuration. As the needs of the lab evolve and the personnel get comfortable with the technology and user interface, the lab can go in for customized solutions to solve specific IT problems.
Maintenance costs are much lower than having an in-house system. First of all, the lab does not have to allocate space or resources for buying complex hardware. Dedicated servers are located with the vendor and the software is made available over the web. Secondly, the lab saves IT costs in the form of hiring professionals to upgrade software applications because these too are up graded by the vendor at no extra cost. With LabKernel the overall IT costs are further minimized as we work on a pay-per-use model with extremely flexible pricing options.
Clinical decision making tools
In-built clinical intelligence equips lab personnel with decision support at every step – be it assigning which batch to put a sample under for minimum TAT or while authorizing patient credentials for report publishing.
Improving the patient perception
The healthcare industry is extremely susceptible to word of mouth – both negative and positive. The hallmark of a good laboratory is its ability to deliver online services such as online booking of appointments, reviewing and medical alerts and receiving reports. It ultimately boils down to how much ease you can put a patient to: if your LIMS allows you to email the patient or his physician a huge MRI report, instead of the patient having to face the inconvenience of carrying it, you get those many brownie points for being in sync with the era of technology.
Regulatory compliance
Last, but definitely not the least. Regulatory compliance lends credibility to a lab business. Today’s internet-empowered patient is aware and selective. A LIMS like LabKernel helps you fetch precious certifications such as NABL, CAP, APLAC, etc. besides ensuring that you meet all regulatory compliances, standards and guidelines in a smooth manner.
If we come to think of it, the healthcare industry has been rather slow in reaping the benefits of the Information technology age. There is a huge unserved (and latent) demand for IT which must be realized and fulfilled to bring about the change that has been long overdue. Attune LabKernel has transformed the working methods of more than 2,500 laboratory centers globally.
Don’t just believe what you read. Ask us for a demo and see for yourself how Attune LabKernel can make your laboratory smarter than it was ever before.
