Remembering COVID: Florida Turns to TestDirectly and Northwest Laboratory to Protect its Seniors from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic offered invaluable lessons in resilience, innovation, and preparedness for LIS laboratory information system vendors and the medical labs they serve. It’s now up to us collectively to prioritize adaptability, technology, collaboration, and workforce well-being to build upon these experiences and shape a stronger even more resilient future.

By applying these insights, LIS software vendors and our medical laboratory colleagues can strengthen their ability to navigate future public health challenges while continuing to support exceptional patient care.

With that perspective, let’s reflect on what it was like to be a laboratory professional during the pandemic. As we revisit the impact of COVID-19, we should also highlight the positive stories that emerged from this global crisis.

Here’s one such inspiring story (originally published on June 15, 2020).

Detailing the Florida Partnership with TestDirectly and Northwest Laboratory to Safeguard Seniors from COVID-19

Los Angeles, CA - TestDirectly, an innovative and new direct-to-consumer lab testing portal that connects patients, businesses, and organizations with collection centers, laboratories, and physicians for fast, safe, and easy testing, has partnered with Northwest Laboratory (now known as Avero Diagnostics) and the Florida Department of Health to collect and test the state’s 500,000 long term care (LTC) residents and staff for COVID-19.

The partnership - one that’s already accounted for 150,000 collected and processed COVID tests - addresses the need to protect Florida’s senior population while answering last month’s call to action from the Trump administration. In May, the White House called on every state to quickly test all LTC residents and employees for the virus.

“The very next day (after the Trump announcement) we were approached by Florida’s Department of Health,” said LigoLab CEO Suren Avunjian. “Their objective was to be the first state to complete the challenge set by the administration, even though they have one of the highest senior populations in the country. Within a week we had TestDirectly (and TestDirectly.com) up and running, ready to test a half-million residents and employees across 4,000 facilities and 67 counties.”

Avunjian and his pathology lab software team (makers of the all-in-one LigoLab Informatics Platform) swiftly built and brought TestDirectly to market as a sister company in February of this year. 

Learn More: Best Pathology Lab Reporting Software - 2025 Buyers Guide and Checklist

The LigoLab-TestDirectly integration goes way beyond simply capturing requisitions (order forms), it provides an end-to-end digital platform that creates direct-to-consumer labs and covers laboratory workflow management from self-registration, to report delivery, to follow-up, all with fast and accurate results delivered directly to the patients (TestDirectly results time; consumer lab reports).

LigoLab and Northwest Laboratory Discuss Partnership with the Dark Intelligence Group

LigoLab’s Avunjian and Northwest Laboratory’s Jennifer Bull (Chief Operating Officer) recently joined Robert Michel (host of the Dark Intelligence Group COVID-19 Stat Intelligence Briefing) to discuss their organization’s partnership. 

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‍Program Summary: Helping Florida’s Seniors Remain Safe with TestDirectly

• In the first phase, the Florida Department of Health's main objective is to conduct a baseline test to identify asymptomatic patients. Once the baseline test is complete, the collection and testing responsibility shifts to the senior care facilities.
• The TestDirectly platform assists Florida’s collection efforts by enabling all LTC employees to self-register online from any computer or mobile device, and all facility administrators to order multiple tests for their residents through the same direct-to-consumer lab testing portal. This streamlines the collection process, eliminating additional paperwork, data entry errors, and contact risk.
• Florida’s DOH has a strike team coordinating the registration and collection of specimens from every facility. The department uses paper and electronic workflows for registration and collection, and every order receives a unique barcode I.D.
• The department collects 10,000 nasopharyngeal swab samples daily and then boxes them up along with requisitions, before shipping them to Northwest Laboratory in Bellingham, Washington.
• Soon after the specimens and requisitions arrive at the laboratory, the barcodes are scanned and the orders are electronically fed into the Northwest Laboratory lab information system (the LigoLab all-in-one medical LIS and lab billing platform). 
• The LIS system generates labels for both the requisitions and the specimens. This allows specimens to go straight to processing in a streamlined lab workflow that enables Northwest to process 10,000 daily samples.
• The TestDirectly results time for processing is 4-to-6 hours after the specimens arrive at the laboratory, and the transfer of the results from the instrument interface to the laboratory information system software, and then to the TestDirectly direct-to-consumer lab testing platform, is completed within 10 minutes. 
• Florida’s LTC residents and employees receive their test results via the portal’s consumer lab reports within 2-to-3 days of collection.

More Details and Quotes From Partnership Leadership

Here are more comments from Bull and Dayle Mooney at Florida Health that highlight the program's early success. 

“We are very grateful for the attention that TestDirectly and LigoLab have given us in support of our Florida initiative,” said Dayle Mooney, Manager of Community Preparedness at Florida Health. “It’s been amazing for us and we look forward to continuing the relationship. I hope others will take advantage of the opportunities that LigoLab has given Florida.”

The TestDirectly direct-to-consumer lab testing portal cuts out the friction and inefficiency for labs, and it’s positioned Northwest Laboratory to go from accepting a statewide contract during a pandemic to releasing 150,000 COVID-19 test results and counting in just over two weeks.

“Besides the workflow in the lab and the efficiencies that the partnership has brought, we continue to work daily with the LigoLab team to identify any part of the process that can become more efficient and more quality-driven,” added Bull, who noted that Florida’s DOH has access to a desktop application of LigoLab LIS lab solution to monitor the test results and prevalence in real-time, with that level of transparency allowing the department to quickly get in touch with county health departments to isolate those who test positive and to initiate contact tracing. 

The fact that patients and administrators can log in and get their results without assistance also relieves a huge follow-up burden for the lab and the health department.

“We would not have been able to accomplish what we have with any other LIS software vendors,” said Bull. “I call Suren and his pathology software team 24/7 and they are always helpful. Knowing that you have a LIS company you can rely on is huge when you have commitments as large as the one we have with Florida.”

In addition to Florida, TestDirectly is also currently deployed in Illinois, Colorado, and Washington. More states will be coming online soon.

The TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Portal: How Does it Work?

LigoLab created the TestDirectly direct-to-consumer lab testing portal to give consumers direct access to medical laboratories for COVID-19 testing and beyond. 

The TestDirectly portal supports workflows for drive-through and on-site/dispatched testing, and soon it will add at-home collections (with telemedicine support) to the menu. It’s a safe, fast, and easy way for patients to connect with collection centers, laboratories, and physicians for direct-to-patient or business-to-business testing.

TestDirectly integrates bi-directionally with all laboratory information systems to maximize efficiency and testing capacity while eliminating the risk of human errors and delays. The easy-to-use portal manages the entire direct-to-consumer lab testing workflow from self-registration, to report delivery and follow-up, and it also provides B2B access to support organizational testing of employees and deployment of testing protocols.

Learn More: Highlighting the Versatility of the TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Lab Testing Portal