I would like to find out what other laboratorians think about their
systems (pros, cons, things to watch out for), and to find out what
installation experiences you have had.

We are currently looking at:  Cerner, LabFusion (Sunquest Select),
Citation, CompuLab, Saint Plus, Meditech

Thanks in advance.

Craig

Our hospital medical laboratory is currently reviewing information systems
for installation in our facility.  I have been selected to coordinate the
installation and management of whatever system is selected due to my
previous computer experience.

I would like to find out from others what experiences you have had in
installing and operating a LIS and the pros and cons of different systems.

We are currently looking at systems from: Cerner, Citation, CompuLab,
LabFusion (Sunquest Select), Meditech, and Saint Plus.

Thanks in advance.              Craig.

The negatives are: 1) Terrible documentation, 2) not very good training,
3) they don't support Macs as dumb terminals, 4) the general office
support system, called "Office Automation," is decades out of date, 5)
the system is case-sensitive, so that just about everyone leaves the
caps-lock key down. People who don't know much about online reading are
tempted to generate reports that are in all caps and are hard to read.
It's almost impossible to get a newbie to realize how bad this looks and
how difficult it is to read.

Finally, there is a programming flaw in the result entry function by
which an unscrupulous laboratorian can alter a previously released
result and not leave a trace in the final{*filter*}sum. This can get you in a
lot of
trouble if the clinicians find out about it. Meditech has been aware
of this problem (for at least a year) but has done nothing about it. To
be fair, though, I believe SunQuest has the same problem, and possibly
other systems do also.

Good luck on setting up your new system.

Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist
Houston/Richmond, TX, USA