How Laboratory Information System Improves Patient Safety

One of the major principles in healthcare is patient safety. Any intervention in healthcare should be safe, regardless of its benefits. The implementation of laboratory information system (LIS) has a multidimensional effect on the healthcare system. LIS plays a role in medical informatics, consumer informatic and translational bioinformatics. Nevertheless, implementation of LIS impacts patient safety in many different aspects. The aim of this paper is to investigate how patient safety can be improved by laboratory information system. The author conducted this review by searching PubMed, Google Scholar, and the World Wide Web (reports, blogs, news) for articles published in English on the following keywords were searched: laboratory information system, patient safety, and quality. We found that there is a broad framework of dimensions to evaluate LIS. The framework is based on two concepts: brain-to-brain loop process, and HOT-fit dimensions. The brain-to-brain loop process can be divided into five phases: 1) pre-test, 2) pre-analytic, 3) analytic, 4) post-analytic and 5) post-test phases. In each phase, LIS provides functions to facilitate performing different tasks. In the HOT-fit model, there are three broad dimensions that need to be analyzed and considered in LIS. These are: 1) Human dimension, 2) Organizational dimensions, and 3) Technology dimensions. LIS plays a critical role in patient safety in the components of this framework. We concluded that Implementation of LIS has certainly a multidimensional impact on patient safety in different aspects on informatics. This includes LIS roles in three field of health informatics: medical informatics, consumer informatics and translational bioinformatics. LIS can integrate these fields to provide safer healthcare.