While people are doing their best to social distance to stop the spread of COVID-19, laboratory clinical analysts have been scrambling to integrate every possible platform that runs COVID-19 PCR and ELISA testing to track the spread.
As late as March, most laboratories were likely barely starting to find analyzers that could actually run the testing. As more testing platforms became available, laboratories looked towards their IT departments to get those analyzers online as soon as possible. By April, the rush to get online was in full swing.
After reagents ran out in the middle of one interface project, other reagents would come in. After staffing changes and training needs had to be met. After priorities had to be made to sacrifice one project for another as the ground shifted constantly. In a matter of a few weeks: we did it. Our client site, during the months of April and May, interfaced 14 different connections to Sunquest and Data Innovations Instrument Manager (DI). This covered 10 different PCR and ELISA platforms, as well as multiple laboratory locations and management structures. Some of those interfaces we tackled:
I am so happy to have had the team I had to work with. Amazing people spent countless hours building, testing, training, and documenting LIS interfaces for analyzers that did not even know COVID-19 a couple of months ago. The functionality and support we had with Sunquest and DI Direct certainly helped us accomplish what felt impossible weeks ago with just a few LIS resources. We did it.
On to the next challenge. How can we help?
