Nov 15th 2011 
Written by: Greg noble
Many offices require an interface or bridge to receive electronic results from their labs. This is a bit of a black box on how it happens, who pays for what and how does this thing work anyway?
As with many of our process we try to make this as simple as possible. The communication tools and technical abilities of the labs as well as their willingness to cover the costs of the interfaces vary from lab to lab and client to client.
In general labs will take on a bridge project and fund the interface if the client has sufficient volume to justify the resource commitment. The best place to start is with your lab sales rep. They are your person on the street who can give you the best information about whether or not such a project is worth undertaking. In some cases MedWorxs is able to group smaller clients together to justify the outlay.
MedWorxs has a very sophisticated communication system which allows us to work with varying lab systems whether through HL7 message exchange flat file or many other format options. We work directly with the lab tech guys to make the interface work.
As you can imagine the big push from stimulus money has created a massive demand for lab interfaces. The labs, both small and large, are being crushed under the load. Currently we are being told a new interface could take 6 months or longer to get on the project list. Of course the larger you are and the harder you push the quicker they tend to respond.
About the author
Greg is a founding member of MedWorxs and chief technology go to guy. Prior to joining MedWorxs he worked with various companies in the technology realm such as Qwest Dex, Centura Healthcare and Focus Healthcare.
