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Hitec At Work in Health Care Fairview/University of Minnesota Medical Center and Clinic Laboratory Data Department Four hundred employees, in 25 areas of the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinic laboratory, complete an average of 4 million tests annually. The organization is listed in Healthcare Informatics as one of the top ten computer advanced laboratories for 1993, providing a model for other facilities' automation efforts. Test data is entered into a Tandem VLX mainframe running the Knowledge Data Systems application software package. The system has a number of interfaces to lab test equipment to expedite the input of test result data. Along with over 1000 daily patient summary reports, the Laboratory Information System generates a number of different management and research reports. The large amount of individual reports allows for only 45 days of current data to be maintained on-line on the Tandem host. In the past, after 45 days, most of the information was archived on to 9 track tape. Some reports were also being sent to microfiche. Regulatory requirements for archive and reproduction of patient reports were not the only concerns of the department. Since the UMHC is a teaching hospital, the laboratory data division must also support the needs of researchers who require access to data imbedded in patient finals. Satisfying requests for research required the staff to mount one or more tapes to search for specific information. The minimum time to gather the results on archived reports was 30 minutes and often consumed many man hours of lab resources. To increase productivity, as well as continue to provide more services to the medical and teaching communities within the center, UMHC explored alternatives to archiving reports on tape and microfiche. They chose to implement DataStore, a sophisticated computer output to laser disk solution (COLD) from Hitec Integration, Inc., an affiliate of Hitec (Laboratories), Ltd. The DataStore indexing and search techniques are optimized for the complex reports generated by the LIS system. To facilitate research, the system must be able to find and validate a large number of index elements that are embedded in the reports. Valid data elements can be found in one or many places within a single page, sometimes up to 10 or more times. DataStore's comprehensive indexing and search engine gives the researcher the most flexibility without creating unnecessary index overhead. Once retrieved the researcher can make printed copies or transfer the data to another program for statistical analysis. Time to satisfy an individual complex search has been reduced to just minutes rather than the previous minimum of one half hour. The client/server system, is integrated in to a previously installed Novell network that is managed by UMHC personnel. The system is not limited to patient test summaries. Various other laboratory reports such as; Cumulative Summaries, Billing Audits, Workload Summaries and Quality Control reports, are captured and maintained on DataStore's high density optical disks. Access from networked PC’s is available for authorized laboratory staff and researchers, who's status, security levels and function availability, are monitored by the DataStore system. Hitec DataStore has had similar success in other large reference laboratories, including:
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