Request and results distribution workflow for laboratory within a hospital
Laboratory requesting and results viewing within a hospital organisation
Purpose and Business Need
Test results from clinical laboratory services may be requested and should be made available to medical caregivers who work in multiple medical departments within the hospital organisation on a need-to-know basis. This use case should ensure the availability of timely, complete and consistent patient information as well as avoidance of potential duplicate testing within the hospital organisation.
EHDS Context
Primary use
Health Information Domain and EHDS Priority Data Category
- Laboratory
- Medical Test Results (Laboratory, Pathology and Microbiology)
Context
- The differences between intra- and cross-enterprise information exchange are becoming smaller, as laboratories and hospitals can also be seen as separate systems, whether they are located within a hospital, or in another location. A standardisation of the laboratory result report would make that distinction even smaller, because in that case, results from both intra-organisational and external laboratory tests can be viewed with the same “tools”, eliminating the need for proprietary infrastructural connections between the laboratory information system and healthcare information systems. Traditionally, there is a direct connection between the Laboratory Information System (LIS) and the Hospital Information System (HIS). However, more and more information comes from other sources, from specialised or commercial laboratories, from primary care, and from other hospitals. A viewing system that can show all this information requires a standardised format for the exchange of laboratory results. The following Use Cases describe a scenario where laboratory results are formatted in such standardised documents.
- IHE has a Profile called LTW (Laboratory Testing Workflow) which deals with the complete workflow within a laboratory.
Participants
- Specialist
- Laboratory assistant
- Laboratory analyst
Functional process flow
- Physician requests laboratory tests through electronic ordering
- Laboratory assistant takes a blood sample from the patient
- Sample is brought to the laboratory
- Results are reported in the Laboratory Information System
- Results are copied to the Hospital Information System
- Physician views the laboratory results from his/her EHR system