Based on your answers, your lab should probably be considering…
An LIS (Laboratory Information System)
Why an LIS?
An LIS is the lifeblood of your laboratory. The LIS handles all of the information processing in your lab. It handles everything from order entry to results processing and report outputs. The LIS also interfaces with your other systems and instruments.
An LIS processes, stores, and manages patient medical lab test records. In addition to associating the right test with the right patient, you can examine cumulative test results. This allows you to investigate demographic and other statistics of importance to the medical community.
Your LIS can accommodate a variety of medical testing needs, from inpatient to outpatient, from hematology to immunology, and now even to molecular genetics. At its core, an LIS is a highly sophisticated relational database that manages medical lab test records from requests to results.
Every LIS will provide a methodology for lab test management. This includes a range of features and functions that perform patient lab test ordering and tracking; interfaces to lab instruments; interfaces to PMS, HIS, EHR, EMR and billing systems; results processing; data storage; reporting; quality controls; and, statistical analyses. Within each of those areas, the LIS will have a range of capabilities designed to streamline the patient test management process.