Staying Organized with Laboratory Information Systems

Choosing the right Laboratory Information System (LIS) is a critical decision and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. After all, not all LIS’ are created equally.

Some will lack features critical to your operations, while others may be overloaded with unnecessary bells and whistles.

The key to being successful with your LIS of choice, will often rest upon your team’s ability to stay organized within the system interfaces themselves.

Invest in Educating Team Members

Even the most well-intentioned efforts can lead teams astray if team members aren’t clearly educated on how to leverage the technology.

It’s, therefore, necessary to ensure that your LIS has an easy-to-use interface and that everyone who uses it has been completely brought up to speed beforehand.

Understanding the ins-and-outs of the laboratory information system’s many features and facets will ensure your team’s ability to stay organized and effective at meeting their goals.

Often, LIS providers will have extensive support teams and databases, so consider this when doing your initial research.

Leverage Your LIS to Its Full Extent

Does your LIS integrate with 3rd party vendors? Does it integrate with key lab equipment? These are questions you’ll need to answer before investing in integration. Knowing that your LIS is able to meet your needs, means you’ll be able to stay organized, effective, and focused.

Allowing your team members to focus on their tasks and goals, rather than fiddling with reporting features or integrations. Modern laboratories rely heavily on digital systems to manage increasing complexity, ensure data accuracy, and meet stringent regulatory requirements. As lab workflows evolve, so does the need for centralized, intelligent systems that can seamlessly handle every aspect of lab operations. 

At its core, a laboratory information system is designed to support the efficient management of laboratory operations—from specimen tracking and workflow automation to results reporting and regulatory compliance. These systems centralize data, reduce reliance on manual entry, and enable labs to maintain consistency across processes, which is crucial in both clinical and research environments.

The ability to integrate your LIS with instruments, electronic health records (EHR), and external databases significantly enhances its power, allowing real-time data sharing and faster turnaround times.  Leveraging barcode-scanning tools can make information capture incredibly streamlined for team members provided that they know how to use it. Similarly, if there are order mapping features in your LIS, it can make overall processes a whole lot cleaner. Investing time in learning all of your LIS’ features is well worth the effort, and can pay cascading benefits for years to come.

Stay Consistent With Best Practices

For your team to stay efficient, it’s a requirement that everyone be rigorous in their use of your Laboratory Information System. Make sure team members understand the importance of each order being entered into the system, the same way, every time.

Utilize Reporting Features

Making good use of the reporting features in your LIS to ensure team coordination.

Top-notch LIS will offer a variety of tools and capabilities. You likely won’t need all of them for your specific implementation, but knowing the limitations will be a great first step.

For instance, you may find that organ mapping is a particularly useful tool for reporting very specific information both quickly and effectively. Some LIS will offer this, while others may need to build a custom implementation to include it.

Either way, leveraging these features will be key to your efforts towards operational efficiency and organization.

Conclusion

As you can see, all of these efforts neatly tie back into the end goal of your team remaining organized and effective with regard to their use of an LIS.

Upfront investments pay long-term dividends when team knowledge and subsequent adherence to LIS protocols are prioritized at all levels of your laboratory organization.