- Serviço de Patologia Clínica, Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central, EPE
ECCMID 2013
Resumo:
In general, the various sectors of the clinical pathology laboratory have evolved towards almost complete automation, by making use of clinical diagnostic equipments that interact with information systems in an automatic way.However, in the microbiology sector, the tests realization’ processes still require a great manual intervention.
The clinical microbiology laboratory of the Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central (CHLC – an hospital group composed of five hospitals located in Lisbon), one of the largest laboratories in Portugal, has been using in the last 2 years a software module, named «Paperless Microbiology», that allows performing all the intra-laboratory work, without any need of paper (work lists, notebooks, etc.), in the pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical phases. This module is part of a vaster information system (Clinidata) that includes the features of a typical LIS (Laboratory Information System), the electronic prescription of tests and the online availability of results.
The paperless microbiology software modulehas the following main advantages (observed during the 2 years of operation): complete traceability of all operations/procedures (collection, receiving, sorting and integration of specimens; direct and culture examinations, work-up, medical validation, export of the preliminary and final results to patients’ electronic health record with the corresponding date, time and identification of the health professional), quick and easy access to patient history, normalization of microbiologist instructions/orders, management of delayed tasks, control of tasks’ execution time, unequivocal numbering of culture plates (using barcode labels), grouping of culture plates by isolate. Moreover, by using this software module, the whole work process becomes independent of the absence or replacement of medical and technicianstaff , and there is a reduced probability of contamination, given that there is no paper circulating in the laboratory.
This work has the following goals:
- To briefly describe a software module that addresses the automation of the microbiology laboratory;
- To detail the way this software module was implemented in a microbiology laboratory of a big hospital group in Portugal;
- To analyse the impact of implementing this software module in terms of productivity, efficiency, safety and information access.
Palavras-chave: LIS, software, traceability