This is a companion article to the feature, “The Laboratory Information Tsunami.”
By Bill Ho, MBA
The fast-paced needs of the healthcare industry require physicians and clinical lab technicians to be equipped with tools and services that ensure speed and quality patient care. One crucial advance: up-to-speed document delivery features and functions within laboratory information management systems (LIMS).
In the past, LIMS generated clinical reports for print, and delivery of those documents was performed via courier services—a process that could take hours or days to complete. Today, however, solutions that are compliant with the privacy and security requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) give clinical labs the capability of sending, receiving, and converting files quickly and securely.
Figure 1. The Biscom Document Router automatically receives and prints clinical lab reports directly from LIMS.
One such service from Biscom, Chelmsford, Mass, a specialist in secure document delivery for regulated industries, makes use of the recently launched Biscom Document Router (BDR), a miniature network appliance that automatically receives and prints clinical lab reports directly from LIMS (see Figure 1). BDR was designed as an alternative solution for delivering confidential patient health information, permitting labs to avoid using courier services or LIMS portals that can disrupt physician workflows. BDR enables documents to be securely transported over an encrypted Internet protocol connection, and routed to a designated printer in a physician’s office within minutes.
Meeting the needs of today’s fast-paced physicians, the HIPAA-compliant device instantly sends and receives high-color, detailed lab reports and medical images securely over the Internet via secure file transfer, with confirmation of the arrival of every transferred document. BDR enables physicians to accurately and quickly diagnose patients as soon as lab reports are generated, boosting patient satisfaction and increasing loyalty between physicians and clinical labs.
Bill Ho, MBA, is CEO at Biscom, Chelmsford, Mass.
