Lims in US public health projects

The recent Public Health Information Network conference in Atlanta USA, revealed a set of collaborative projects undertaken by Starlims and public health departments

The recent Public Health Information Network (PHIN) conference in May 2004, held in Atlanta USA, revealed a set of collaborative projects undertaken by Starlims and public health departments at US county, state and federal levels.

The project (known as Sunrise) is aimed at creating out-of-the-box configurable functionality to support a wide range of multidisciplinary processes consistent with guidelines set forth by the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and the Centers of Disease Control (CDC).

This functionality, incorporated within Starlims, presents an enterprise level information system that brings together all public health laboratory activities into a single platform, offering comprehensive reporting, surveillance, and networking capabilities compatible with national and international standards.

Starlims is designed to receive samples from clinical, environmental, food testing, bioterrorism, chemical terrorism, and other ad-hoc or planned sample submissions.

These samples are tracked, tested, reported and the information retained for epidemiological studies or submission to adjunct agencies such as the CDC.

In addition to conventional Lims functions, the data collected on samples may include patient demographics, grant, study, environmental or other metadata.

Starlims public health solutions are designed as a platform for linking between regional public health partners working under the PHIN framework, HL7 messaging protocols and using Loinc and Snomed as the common vocabulary for test names and observations.

This functionality enables cross site sample transfer and data exchange.

The nature of Starlims relationship with the public health sector is based on an ongoing commitment to this partnership, assuring that new functionality and content developed for one PHL is accessible to all Starlims based PHL partners.

The collaboration was initiated by the public health departments of Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia, focusing on defining common use, design and implementation methodologies to adhere to the general standard provided by the APHL.

Leveraging Starlims configuration tools, the system fully supports site specific modifications including interfaces to input data streams, reporting systems, and local key performance indicators (KPI) and management metrics; support for specialised assays, managing state mandated testing programmes not common to the APHL general model; and state specific billing or cost recovery processes.

In parallel with the state programs, Starlims is now completing the first stage of a defined-phased project leading to the enterprise-wide deployment at the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID).

The project includes more than 80 labs in areas of bacteriology, virology, mycology and parasitology with unique characteristics that affect sample control, test representation and results reporting.

The project's goal is to balance the agency's need to standardise with the lab's needs to support many different processes and workflows.

The NCID is one of 12 centres, institutes, and offices within the CDC, focusing on preventing illness, disability, and death caused by infectious diseases in the United States and around the world.

"We value and respect the opportunity to work with these prestigious institutions on creating a platform for converting their laboratory testing data into meaningful and actionable knowledge to be securely distributed throughout the public health information network" said Isaac Friedman, Starlims's CEO, commenting on these projects.

"Starlims provides our public health partners with the combined advantages of a mature off the shelf configurable laboratory information solution, a responsive delivery team, and an unmatched commitment to the shared vision for public health.".

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