Leveraging Diagnostic Laboratory Data

The results of veterinary diagnostic laboratory testing are critical in managing the health of both individuals and groups of animals.   The clearest use of test result data is for clinicians and herd health managers to establish diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment plans for their patients.  There are however, myriad other uses for laboratory data that to date have proven difficult to leverage.  Trace First staff took the lead on seeing a special edition of the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation published on how data housed in laboratory information management systems can be accessed, analyzed, reported and disseminated for use by laboratory clients.  

The massive stores of data maintained in Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories have the potential to support local, regional and national animal health surveillance efforts, provide near real-time situational awareness and support outbreak response, along with the primary purpose of individual animal or herd health management.  Access to these data stores relies on robust and modern laboratory information management systems (LIMS).  Ever expanding reporting requirements from state and federal entities, growing concerns of global outbreaks and challenging budgets mean that laboratories have to be innovative, expand their competitive services, increase efficiencies and decrease costs.  Clients expect 24x7 access to their data and of particular relevance to this special section, value-added analysis and reporting.  Oversight agencies expect timely and accurate reporting of test results for high-consequence diseases.  Unfortunately, many labs maintain LIMS which are antiquated and written for a time when mailed reports were acceptable. Written in archaic programming languages, these systems face increased security risks and are unable to leverage the advantages of modern hardware and cloud technology.  These systems are difficult to maintain, slow to update and lack the ability to easily integrate with external systems, like business intelligence and geospatial analytical software. (McCluskey, 2021, Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation Vol. 33(3) 396-398).