Hospitals need a LIMS!
Hospitals typically use clinical LIS supplied by instrument vendors and some dedicated LIS vendors. Typically LIS product lack configurability and adaptability to modern needs, most of the LIS are boxed non-modifiable products. In today's scenarion hospitals need a full blown LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) with confugrability and cusomisation.
HIS Integration
Hospitals are more interested in exchanging data between LIMS and Hospital Information Systems (HIS) and these type of integration is possible only with a full blown LIMS system. Also making laboratory data available to patients, doctors and EMR systems have become the norm of the day.
Single solution for multi-speciality labs
Traditional LIS systems were able to manage workflows for specific laboratories and the hospitals had to buy multiple systems to cater to biochemistry, haematology, clincal pathology, histopathology and microbiology. QuaLIS Clinical has been designed to cater to multiple departments and has all the capabilities that are required for each of those specific laboratories.
High Throughput!
While we talk about hospital labs it is very important to talk about the throughput of the system. Traditional LIMS cannot handle the type of throughput required for a typical hospital lab. QuaLIS clinical was designed from ground-up for a clinical environment, right from its database structure to user interfaces it has been designed to address high throughput and full traceability.
System Features
Specimen Registration & Test Ordering
QuaLIS® has a built-in patient and specimen registration module which can be used for Outpatients. Also the system can be tightly integrated with any HIS system and orders can be placed from the HIS system, these orders are automatically reflected at the LIS system.
Phlebotomy
Once tests are ordered, specimen collection can be streamlined using the phlebotomy module. The scheduling of specimen collection at required intervals, label generation, consolidation of the specimens collected and dispatching to a central receiving area or lab and can keep track of specimen collection.
Aliquot & Accession
Once the specimen is sent to a central receiving area or a lab, multiple aliquots can be created and tests allocated for each aliquot, either for automated analysis or manual test. Here an accession number is generated for each aliquot.
Bar Code
QuaLIS® supports barcode label generation for specimen. These barcode labels can be fixed on specimen containers. These labels are read by the automated analyzers and the appropriate tests are conducted based on the test orders received for each specimen. This allows error free operation of the system.
Workflow
The core module handles sample registration, label printing, results entry (by sample, by test)., run creation for samples that can be run as a batch, result related attachments for attaching instrument reports or other files like excel calculation sheet or any file that needs to be tracked, reagents/standards used for each test, qty used, instrument used can be recorded for full traceability. Results entered can be approved by an authorized person and reports can be released.
Results Entry and Capture
The results module allows creation of run or worklist for different tests. The run can contain quality control samples, blanks check samples etc at intervals decided by the laboratory. Results can be entered for tests based on unique specimen ID or by test code for multiple samples at a time. Results can be numeric , character, predefined selectable text or an interpretation text, image or any attachment. Numeric results can be validated against normal values from a master based on age and sex so that abnormal values can be flagged with a warning.
Instrument Interface based Capture
Instruments can be interfaced with QuaLIS using the optional interface middleware. The middleware acts as an agent to transfer test orders to specific analyzers along with specimen and patient details. Once the orders are placed the analyzer performs the tests and returns the results through the middleware to the LIS. The middleware can interface both uni-directional , bi-directional, query based analyzers and works with ASTM protocol for clinical analyzers.
Report Release
The system goes through a configurable workflow that takes through a pre-defined workflow that handles approval of results and release of reports. Once the approval is placed electronically by means of a user name and password and a reason for the action the specimen results are approved and a report can be automatically generated with an electronic signature. System has a built-in query and search facility to reach reports based on several criteria like patient ID, name, age, sex and Unique hospital ID.
QA/QC & Analytics
The system keeps recording results of QCs and check samples continuously . These results can be used for plotting Levy-Jennings type of charts to check the performance of the lab. Optionally the results can be made available to external systems as well.