Case Study
Remembering COVID: With TestDirectly Wait Times Are Shorter and Results Are Easier to Access at the DuPage County Test Site
March 17, 2025
Editor’s Note: On May 11, 2023, the World Health Organization officially declared the end of the global COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. While the broader public has more or less moved forward, healthcare professionals - especially those specializing in medical laboratory information system software (LIS systems) and pathology lab management - must continue reflecting on the valuable lessons learned and remain on guard for future infectious disease challenges.
Learn More: End of the Federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) Declaration
At LigoLab, supporting our laboratory partners during the pandemic was the highest priority. We responded to their evolving requirements by providing innovative LIS software solutions engineered to navigate unprecedented obstacles. Our collaborative efforts streamlined laboratory workflow management, strengthened patient and provider safety, and ensured resilience during the crisis.
Capturing the determination and adaptability of our partners on the frontline was a significant highlight of this journey. As we recognize their unwavering dedication, we revisit an impactful moment from August 2020, reflecting on COVID-19’s profound influence and the future of LIS medical technology.
Highlighting DuPage County Health Department and its Successful Plan to Streamline COVID-19 Drive-Through Testing with TestDirectly
Here’s a case study featuring the DuPage County Health Department’s community-based testing location. Dupage County has used the TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Lab Testing Portal since July 16, 2020.
Simplified data entry, shorter wait times, and much faster turnaround times for test results. That’s what the DuPage County Health Department has experienced at its COVID-19 testing location in Wheaton, Ill. since implementing TestDirectly in mid-July.
The TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Lab Testing Portal is a dynamic, web-based clinical laboratory management tool designed to connect patients, physicians, employers, and government agencies with collection centers and molecular laboratories for fast, safe, and easy COVID-19 collection, testing, and reporting.
Learn More: Introducing TestDirectly, One of LigoLab’s Most Powerful Supporting Modules
How DuPage County Has Leveraged the TestDirectly Digital Workflow
“It’s certainly gotten better as we’ve gone along,” said Christopher Hoff, Director of Community Health Resources for DuPage County. “TestDirectly has enabled us to test and serve many more people daily and most importantly, get people their results quickly and easily.”
Hoff said patient preregistration with TestDirectly (via TestDirectly.com) has removed handwritten paper forms and enabled contactless communication at their drive-through testing location. He also noted follow-up is now much easier because patients can log in to the TestDirectly portal and get their results in most cases just a day after the sample is collected.
Before TestDirectly, the DuPage location relied on several manual processes for sample collection. That was until the TestDirectly electronic workflow was first deployed on July 16, 2020.
“By going to an electronic clinical lab workflow, we no longer rely on manually entered data - that’s allowed us to eliminate 50 percent of the onsite data entry team,” said Kristen Lundeen, Community Initiatives Coordinator for Emergency Preparedness at the DuPage County Health Department.
“This has allowed us to expand the number of staff collecting specimens and increase the number of samples collected daily. Those involved with quality control have been repurposed to help out in other areas, and it’s allowed us to open up another drive-through lane,” she said.
TestDirectly Accelerates COVID-19 Testing: Faster Processing, Error-Free Data Entry, and Increased Daily Capacity
Testing is free and 400-to-600 samples are collected daily at the Dupage County location. Patients preregister on a mobile device and then check in with a registration code that when entered, automatically prints specimen labels with the patient’s demographics and a unique barcode ID, thereby ensuring specimen chain-of-custody and integrity. From there, patients give themselves a nasal swab test with instructions from the drive-through staff.
The samples are then packaged and routed to a lab in Pekin, Ill. for processing. With the TestDirectly direct-to-consumer lab testing electronic workflow, all that’s needed is for the specimen’s unique barcode ID to be scanned into the lab’s laboratory LIS system before it goes straight to processing.
This lab workflow removes a significant bottleneck of manual order entry that otherwise would cause delays in turnaround time. It also helps direct-to-consumer labs boost their testing capacity while eliminating the risk of data entry errors.
The average turnaround time (TestDirectly results time) for the PCR test in the molecular LIS lab is typically 4-to-6 hours after specimen arrival. As soon as the result is finalized and verified, a report is created and immediately delivered by TestDirectly to all stakeholders.
Patients, physicians, facility administrators, and local health department officials are notified when the results (consumer lab reports) are ready to be reviewed via the TestDirectly portal. This allows agencies like the DuPage County Health Department to immediately follow up with individuals who test positive to ensure the individual is isolated, that a case investigation is completed, and that contacts are notified to control the spread of the virus.
The successful launch in Wheaton has led to the decision to deploy the TestDirectly Direct-to-Consumer Lab Testing platform at the Interstate Center testing location in Bloomington, Ill. in the coming days.
TestDirectly Offers Rapid Deployment and Seamless Laboratory Information System Integration for Enhanced Lab Efficiency and Secure Reporting
Lab operators and public health institutions will be happy to learn that TestDirectly can be deployed quickly and interface with all laboratory information systems to maximize efficiency and testing capacity while providing secure communications with state and national registries.
The easy-to-use direct-to-consumer lab testing portal manages the entire clinical lab workflow from self-registration to drive-through or on-site collection, and from report generation to follow-up.
TestDirectly is a scalable direct-to-consumer lab testing solution developed by LigoLab delivering 30,000 daily results. This pathology software company - one that specializes in LIS systems and laboratory billing solutions - recently partnered with Northwest Laboratory and the Florida Department of Health (DOH) to conduct a baseline test of the state’s 4,000 long-term care (LTC) facilities to screen residents and staff for COVID-19. Through this ground-breaking partnership, 150,000 tests were processed in just three weeks (read the case study below).
Case Study: How Our Lab Partner Embraced Laboratory Information System Innovation and Won a Statewide Testing Contract
The TestDirectly footprint continues to grow as labs in Illinois, Colorado, North Carolina, New Jersey, California, Arizona, Florida, and Texas have all recently come on board and added the direct-to-consumer lab testing portal to streamline their collecting, testing, and reporting lab workflows.
TestDirectly is available for collection centers and laboratories performing COVID-19 testing throughout the U.S., and for businesses that are adding safety and testing protocols for their employees to return to work safely and to stay safe over time.
Learn More: A Scalable Solution for Molecular LIS Testing Labs
