Enhancing Clinical Decision Support in Toxicology Laboratories

In an environment where drug testing is increasingly prevalent among providers, employers, and government agencies, clinicians are required to make timely and accurate decisions for patient care always prioritizing safety, efficacy, and patient well-being. 

When individuals´ health, safety, and livelihoods are at stake, a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) can assist toxicology laboratories in achieving necessary accuracy and quality standards, while also executing fast turnaround times and increasing lab productivity.   

For addiction centers and pain management clinics, the LIMS operating within their toxicology laboratory can be mobilized as a clinical support tool.  

The Role of LIMS in Supporting Clinical Decisions  

Access to data and the insights that information can yield is imperative for accelerating accurate decision-making for any toxicology lab. Not only does it aid scalability, but as testing and commercial pressures intensify, it also helps ensure that quality standards can be met consistently without compromise. 

Manual processes and paper-based systems can become increasingly problematic when hundreds of specimens need to be processed quickly in any one day. Additionally, the increasing diversification occurring in toxicology labs, which are experiencing a rise in cross-discipline testing, require the management of increasing and varied datasets.  

Laboratory informatic management systems offer the analyses and reporting needed to support the thousands of patient care decisions providers make. A LIMS that can effectively manage, access, and share data systems through a single instance can help deliver diagnosis and treatment more efficiently. Although LIMS does not directly make clinical decisions, it provides essential support to clinicians who are responsible for informed decision-making. 

Data Integration with Truly Automated Processes 

For a LIMS to best deliver as a clinical decision support tool, it must be a fully automated solution – not a manual/automated hybrid. 

The use of manual LIMS, or automated hybrid LIMS involving multiple third parties or locations can cause errors and slow down the availability of results — from order entry portals to electronic medical records (EMR) and other back-office software. A fully automated LIMS solution links and streamlines systems for easier connection.  

Integrating LIMS with Electronic Medical Records and LabOnline Portal 

A LIMS that fully integrates with an EMR and enables reporting (and order entry) within the provider portal is a significant advancement for toxicology labs. When integrated with the EMR, a fully automated LIMS provides clinicians with access to the patient’s health history, including previous toxicology results, medications, and other relevant clinical data. This allows for more comprehensive decision-making, reducing the risk of misinterpretation or oversight. Furthermore, clinicians no longer need to toggle between their EMR and the LIMS solution to view a result.  

However, some laboratory EMRs are not capable, from a technology perspective, of integrating with a LIMS. In that instance, the Clinisys™ Laboratory Solution also offers LabOnline, a web portal for providers to submit orders, receive reports, view status of samples, and perform other important activities in a laboratory environment. By providing both options, labs are equipped with the tools needed to reach all of their clients. 

Flag Interactions or Contraindications

For pain management clinics, a LIMS that can automatically flag potential interactions or contraindications, which could affect patient outcomes, creates efficiencies in the lab. These efficiencies ensure what is being given to patients is accurate and what the patient reports back is accurate. This patient profile information can influence the rules for clinical decisions regarding how testing should proceed, and as such it is imperative that it is accurately captured in an automated LIMS.   

Exception-Based Management for Enhanced Efficiency 

Another feature of a fully automated LIMS is managing by exceptions, so that a physician only sees abnormal results. This enables customer self-service reporting via ad hoc queries in the web portal. The LIMS builds a rules-based engine to manage screen, confirm, secondary screen, and re-confirm logic. End-to-end testing is now possible.  

Data Accessibility and Reporting 

One-size-fits-all reporting is not suitable for toxicology labs serving addiction treatment centers and pain management clinics, where a standardized report may not provide the granularity or focus needed for specific use cases – for example, longitudinal data on patient compliance versus turnaround time and confirmation logic. By providing self-service reports through a customer service web portal, labs empower various stakeholders with easily accessible, data-driven insights to combat drug misuse via prevention and public education initiatives. Through robust reporting capabilities, customers’ ad-hoc reports can range from straightforward chain of custody on a certain sample to insightful changes in institutional ordering patterns over time. 

Lower Total Cost of Ownership 

A LIMS in a toxicology laboratory acts as a powerful clinical decision support tool, helping clinicians make timely and accurate decisions for patient care. However, not all LIMS can provide the data accessibility, integration and reporting toxicology laboratories and their physician clients need. A cloud-based SaaS deployment LIMS solution is essential. Delivered via the flexibility and reduced maintenance cost of a cloud versus on premises solution, and combined with the subscription-based SaaS payment model, laboratories benefit from a lower total cost of ownership. 

The cloud-based SaaS deployment model offered by Clinisys™ Toxicology Laboratory eliminates significant upfront capital expenditure on hardware and infrastructure, allowing for more efficient resource allocation. It helps ensure the system is always up to date with the latest features and security patches, reducing the burden on internal IT staff and minimizing downtime. Additionally, scalability is enhanced, enabling laboratories to adjust capacity based on demand without incurring substantial costs. The cloud-based solution also facilitates seamless collaboration and data sharing across multiple locations, improving overall operational efficiency. 

Meet the LIMS solution that can help your organization deliver accurate and quality results while navigating a competitive and highly regulated toxicology landscape.