Laboratory Testing Workflow

Laboratory Testing Workflow (LTW) integrates the ordering, scheduling, processing, and result reporting activities associated with in vitro diagnostic tests performed by clinical laboratories in healthcare institutions.

Summary

The Laboratory Testing Workflow Profile covers the workflow related to tests performed on in vitro specimens by a clinical laboratory inside a healthcare institution, for both existing and pending orders, related to identified patients and unidentified or misidentified patients. It specifies transactions that maintain the consistency of patient and order information from registration through ordering, scheduling, pre-analytical processing, testing, technical and clinical validation, to reporting and usage of test results by the care providers. This profile leverages IT Infrastructure profiles [PAM] or [PDQ] to rely on up to date patient and encounter data. This profile leverages IT Infrastructure profiles [ATNA] and [CT] for security.

Benefits

Reduces Errors and Enhance Patient Care

• Prevents manual data entry errors by ensuring that each piece of information is entered only once, by the person closest to the source of this information, and from there, made available in due time to any system who needs it.
• Reduce over-ordering and over blood sampling from the patient by letting the current lab orders and their results follow the movements of the patient from a ward to another.
• Avoids lost specimens by tracking specimen collection in ward or in sample collection room, and specimen acceptance in laboratory.
• Accelerate the delivery of laboratory results to the ward staff, especially in emergency situations where a clinical decision is conditioned by some test results.

Improves Throughput in Care Process

• Suppresses manual order entry time on the laboratory side since the order is placed directly by the clinical system operated in the ward to the laboratory information system.
• Stremalines sample collection and transportation process, delivering a unique identifier to each specimen collected, tightly coupled with the identifiers of the orders requesting this specimen to be performed.
• Saves telephone calls between ward and laboratory since urgent results are delivered immediately and all status changes of any current order are reported in real time to the ordering system.
• Reduces the amount of paper reports since all lab results are consolidated in a global system that shares them with the authorized caregivers in the wards.

Favors independence of healthcare institution from their clinical and ancillary systems

• By providing clear specifications of interfaces between Clinical Information Systems (CIS), Laboratory Information Systems (LIS) and Laboratory Automation Systems (LAS), enables to replace one of these systems in a department or unit without breaking the existing data workflows involving this department or unit.

Details

The Laboratory Testing Workflow (LTW) Integration Profile establishes the continuity and integrity of diagnostic test orders placed towards clinical laboratories for a patient and of the results produced for these orders, inside the healthcare institution.
This Integration Profile is bound to in vitro diagnostic testing (tests performed on in vitro specimen). It supports all laboratory specialties but anatomic pathology.
The LTW Integration Profile covers three major use cases:

• Order placed with specimens collected and identified by the orderer
• Order placed with specimens collected by a third party, then identified and labeld by the laboratory information system
• Order generated by the laboratory and notified to the ordering system to obtain an order number.

LTW Integration Profile defines 5 Transactions, all of which based on HL7 release 2.5 or 2.5.1 messaging standard. Each transaction selects a subset of HL7 message structure and specifies a set of constraints applying to each message structure, as well as the responsibilities of the sender and receiver.

Systems Affected

Systems involved in this profile are:

Actors & Transactions:

Specification

Profile Status: Trial Implementation

Documents: IHE Radiology Technical Framework:

• Vol. 1 - Section 3 documents the profile
• Vol. 2 - Sections 4.1 to 4.8, 4.10 to 4.14, 4.16, 4.18, and 4.20 to 4.21, document specific transactions. Appendices A, B and D provide additional requirements and suggestions on mapping information to ensure consistent flow of information throughout the department.
• Vol. 3 - Sections 4.42, and 4.48 to 4.49 document specific transactions.

Underlying Standards:

• HL7

See Also

Related Profiles

<List profiles this one depends on, profiles that depend on this one, profiles that are synergistic with this one>

Consumer Information

This page is based on the Profile Template