ABOUT LIS

With reduction in Government of Jamaica funding, The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, has embarked on initiatives to improve operational efficiencies and increase income generating activities across the campus. 

The UWI has branded its laboratory services as the University of the West Indies Diagnostic Laboratories (UWIDL) comprising the Pathology and Microbiology laboratories. These laboratories have been earmarked as potential commercial operations to be assessed and upgraded to provide services that are internationally acceptable and an operation that is commercially viable.

With this in mind the University initiated this project to undertake the automation of laboratories operations as a significant step towards the desired transformation. It must be noted that this project is an offshoot of the larger laboratory commercialization concept being driven by the Campus. 

The discussions which have led to the current implementation of an LIS, started in  2010-2011 and out of this was initiated an extensive search for potential solutions and rigorous analysis  of the potentials identified. The analysis needed to be rigorous because of the size and cost of the undertaking, and because of its importance to meeting the objective of offering the potential for fundamentally transforming the operations of the laboratories. It is important to note that Open Source options were not omitted from the search parameters.

The SCC LIS Software was designated out of the analysis, as the primary choice, and it was acquired in 2011.

There had been prior attempts in past years to acquire and implement LIS software. In fact many in the Departments had got so wary of the ‘old’ talk that they were almost cynical of this ever succeeding.

Expected Benefits:

Significant improvement in turn-around time; ability to search and find records immediately; ability to track patient history; ability to operate within international standards; ease of  maintaining records; real time information; secure anywhere/anytime access …. and more

 

LIS Information Flyer