How to Manage & Organize your Laboratory Work Processes with Technology?
June 23, 2021A lab’s productivity revolves around its work processes. How swiftly a lab can collect data, analyze it, and interpret it further determines its efficiency. An effective workflow can hugely impact the reproducibility of the data as it ensures the seamless processing of similar data on every occurrence. However, the most crucial factor that hampers a lab’s productivity is the usage of outdated laboratory management software.
Technology expands limitlessly, with innovations emerging daily to simplify and streamline laboratory work. You can optimize your workflow by leveraging the right laboratory information management software (LIMS) and other helpful lab tools. Let’s dive in and explore practical ways to organize your lab’s work processes with technology.
Discovering the Benefits
Before we explore ways to implement LIMS software in your lab, let’s first look at some of its benefits.
Reduced Waiting Time
As the lab management software is responsible for data maintenance, the lab technicians can focus more on the preliminary work of interpreting the tests and providing faster reports for the patients.
Reduction in Errors
Every lab makes a multitude of clerical errors while the data is in the pre-analytic and post-analytic stages. Reliable laboratory information management software handles such errors with precision and delivers error-free results.
Efficiency in Record-keeping
Traditional record-keeping techniques are a mess. You need to stack files one above the other, and finding a record is a highly time-consuming and complex task. On the other hand, the software effortlessly maintains the consistency and persistency of the recorded data.
Reliable and Accurate Results
A lab’s reliability is always determined by the accuracy of its reports. The higher the precision, the more trust it provides to its patients. Using LIMS, the data is computed more accurately, and finer results are generated.
Easy Generation and Dispersal of Reports
Generating the test reports by hand and entering each test in the manual logbook takes extended periods of time, whereas the software can generate and disperse the cumulative statistics and reports in a matter of seconds.
Predictive Analyzation of Diseases
Today’s advanced lab software derives key insights from current and historical patient data. Healthcare providers can use these insights to identify potential medical issues within a patient’s body, enabling them to provide treatment before a disease becomes life-threatening.
Security Enhancement
Laboratory data is as important as any other form of data. Choosing laboratory management software for your lab ensures the data stored in the storage banks is safe from all kinds of leaks and hacks.
Space Efficiency
Besides providing security and efficiency in handling the tests and generating their results, LIMS saves a substantial amount of physical space that bulky file records would otherwise occupy.
Ability to Act Smart
Leveraging the software, different lab systems can be interconnected. This allows the lab scientists to briskly collect the data from the tests, analyze it, and send the findings back as soon as possible.
Also Read: Common Issues with Paper-Based Lab Management Systems & How to Overcome Them
Managing the Workflow of the Laboratory
A synchronized effort among lab management, staff, and the lab design team ensures optimal workflow efficiency. Therefore, developers should create laboratory information management software that meets all the lab’s requirements and addresses long-term and short-term goals. The following are some must-have features for a good LIMS:
Management of Lab Inventory
A lab has several inventories, from tubes to files to lab equipment. Managing them is an uphill task if done manually. Using software, all the inventories can be managed in seconds, and you would have a simple description of all the items within your system.
Accurate Testing
The most significant benefit of LIMS is that it collects the data and then uses several algorithms to analyze it in various forms. Studying and testing all this crucial data generates reports with higher accuracy rates than those generated manually.
Sample Management
Managing samples becomes effortless with lab software. A unique code is allocated to each sample whose details are entered into the system through a barcode. The entered details can generate all the requirements needed for the sample’s testification.
Reporting
Several reports are needed in a laboratory, from patient reports to stock lists. LIMS helps to keep records of these reports and ensures quick record access when a product is enquired about. Moreover, it helps in easy report generation for the patient and other lab operations.
Communication with the Patient
Communication is essential to managing the interaction between staff and patients in a laboratory. The laboratory management software keeps the patient’s relevant information in its record. On every activity conducted in the lab for the patient, the system automatically generates a message and sends the details to the customer.
Are you looking for Reliable Laboratory Management Software?
Implementing laboratory management technology can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of lab services. However, it would be best to choose advanced laboratory information management software that can do so. Softclinic’s laboratory information software is one of the most advanced lab software in the market, and it can improve your lab’s productivity to a greater extent.