Laboratories are available today in almost all medical institutions. But today it is by no means always possible to speak substantively about their full or partial informatization. At the same time, the expected effect from this can be much higher than, for example, in the case of an electronic registry. Among other things, laboratory IC can become an additional driver of organizational transformations in healthcare. At what pace is it planned to develop laboratory ICT infrastructure in the country?
Nowadays, many medical laboratory use RIS PACS to organize their database and medical information.
The idea of interconnecting laboratory and computer equipment, instead of typing instrument readings on the keyboard by hand, arose almost immediately, as soon as the first computers appeared. But engineers started to implement it en masse only with the beginning of the PC era.
Man at the monitor
Despite the fact that the process of informatization in our country has always been distinguished by some originality, the USSR, by and large, at first did not stand out much in this respect from the rest of the world. It is easy to be convinced of this by leafing through the Soviet scientific journals of the 70-80s that have turned yellow from time to time. To begin an academic article with a lengthy description of how exactly, by means of an analog-to-digital converter, it was possible to adapt one or another measuring device to a DVK-type computer, and to accompany all this splendor with the text of the FORTRANe program was considered good form in those years.
Long terms like “electronically tunable” sounded fresh and unusual in the late 70s. A programmer in a white coat with a pack of punched cards with holes in his hand gradually gave way to a man with glasses, attentively contemplating a black-and-green monitor, which, in the minds of the broad masses, became a new symbol of a scientist at the forefront of scientific and technological progress.
Physicians did not lag behind other researchers and experimenters in this regard. They were among the first to introduce automated analytical systems, say, in the laboratories of the Central Clinical Hospital. And – back in the mid-70s.
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Standards and technologies
Laboratory systems have evolved along with the general development of IT. Measurement data migrated from unreliable mini-computer diskettes to databases. They began to be stored not on a PC, but on a server. In the 90s, systems in foreign laboratories acquired web interfaces and EDI protocols for exchanging information with each other.
Abroad, however, they also did not stand still. And they quickly found out that LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) solutions are easy to commercialize. And they are especially in demand where it is a question of carrying out a series of measurements of the same type.
For example, in a large industrial enterprise, where the incoming inspection of batches of raw materials and quality control of manufactured products are an integral part of the production business process. With regard to the practice of large patient-oriented clinical diagnostic laboratories, where one can also speak of a kind of measurement industry, to designate similar systems, along with LIMS, they also use today the truncated abbreviation LIS (LIS, laboratory IS).
