Clinical Laboratory Informatics and Analytics: Challenges and Opportunities

The American Medical Informatics Association defines biomedical and health informatics as the “science of how to use data, information, and knowledge to improve human health and the delivery of health care services.” More specifically within laboratory medicine, informatics and data analytics use multiple sources of data to improve all aspects of the clinical laboratory, from workflow and personnel to result interpretation. With increasing healthcare information complexity, integration and interoperability issues have become readily apparent between health information systems, bringing to the forefront questions about the validity of data exchange and basic data access. Most data generated within the clinical laboratory are of high quality, well annotated, and structured discretely, however turning these data into useful and actionable information can be a difficult data analytics bridge for many to cross. Instrument and laboratory information system (LIS) vendors are beginning to aid in the creation of generalized reports for common laboratories questions; however, this still falls short of the potential of the clinical laboratory to bring more actionable information to hospital leadership, clinicians, and patients. Collaboration among informaticians, information technology (IT) professionals, and the laboratorians is critical to ensure our health information systems can utilize and report laboratory data clinically, in addition to providing interoperable data streams for furthering research, education, and innovation in healthcare.