Understanding Medical Labs
When the doctor sees a patient and wants to know more about what is going on inside their body, tests will be ordered. There are many different types of tests that the doctor may want to obtain the results to. You can learn more about the importance of both the tests and the laboratory information management system that is an important part of the testing process by reading here.
How testing is ordered
When the doctor wants to order tests to get a better idea of what's going on with regards to someone's health, they can order blood tests, urine tests, biopsies, cultures, and more. The patient may have the actual tests performed in the doctor's office, in a hospital, or even in the lab itself. The samples taken from the patient will be processed in a specific way to give the lab detailed results that will then be passed on to the health care provider.
What is testing done for
Tests are ordered for any number of reasons. One of the reasons for ordering urine, blood, or even hair or culture tests is to look for drug or alcohol use, and this can be done routinely or randomly to screen someone for employment, or as part of their employment agreements. Testing of blood can show whether a person is sick, how sick they are, what they may have too much of, what they may be lacking, and many, many other things. Cultures will look at things like the post-nasal drip or saliva to determine things about the person's health.
What laboratory information management systems do
When the person's sample goes to the lab, it will be placed with a number of other people's samples. It must be tested before it gets old or the results won't be accurate. The sample must be tested correctly, and the results need to be gathered and printed in a way that gives the doctor the results they want and need to properly know where to go next with their patient. The laboratory information management system will keep track of samples, log the data from those samples, and take care of such tasks as classifying the samples, printing results, printing labels, storing data, and much more. The management system plays a crucial part with regards to all aspects of the lab from the moment a sample comes in, until long after the results have been sent off to the doctor.
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