As we enter an era where LIS companies are competing to get almost everything interfaced and get the data feed, we still have some medical device vendors sticking to their proprietary protocols. Always makes me wonder why?? What actually governs the protocol they decide to use?
Over the years universal protocols like ASTM and HL7 have evolved enormously and have options of tapping almost each bit of information which can be used by a LIS (results performed for a test, error conditions, patient demographics and so forth) . But still new devices (Abbott, Coulter etc.) are sticking to their age old protocols of transmitting information which adds to the effort of developing a device driver and then interfacing them. So in a way LIS companies are mostly reactive in their development process based on the medical devices available in the market. Why shouldn’t there be a common platform where the LIS and the device vendors put forth their views? That would be an ideal scenario, imagine a vendor selling a device to the hospital and the LIS has a driver ready for it. Result would definitely be an improved state of healthcare…
