Webinars

_{Michael Kalinowski}:  Okay, for those that are joining, welcome. Come on in. We'll officially start in just a moment.

Well, good morning and welcome to this LigoLab webinar and AP LIS product tour. It's something that we're excited to be involved in. We're certainly happy and excited to have all of the participants that will be joining this call. And we're especially happy to have Allison Still with us, LIS product specialist and a person that really knows the LIS software inside and out, has worked in the professional laboratory world, and then we luckily stole her away from that a couple of years ago and really utilized her talents here at LigoLab.

So, Allison, welcome. Thank you very much for coming on in and taking some time out of your typically busy days to help us out here with this product tour. 

^{Allison Still}: Thanks. Happy to be here and show everyone the software. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: All right. Perfect. So I think just a little housekeeping here. We want this to be interactive, so if possible, can you save your questions till the end?

We're going to take about 30 minutes for this product tour. If you see something during the course of those 30 minutes, certainly take note and then bring it up at the end when we have that question and answer session.

First a preview of what's going to be covered today. Here's the list, grossing touchscreen, histology work log, error tracking, case assignment and distribution, QA and statistical reporting, and then as mentioned just a bit ago, your questions in a Q& A session at the end.

So, I think without any further delay, let’s get started with Allison taking over.

^{Allison Still}: All right here I have the grossing queue open, and so we're going to start with the grossing. 

We have the specialized Touchscreen tool for grossing. As the name implies, this screen is intended to be used with a touchscreen. So you'll notice the buttons in here are a little bit bigger. As we know, grossers are frequently at a workstation where they might not have keyboard and mouse. First step here will be to scan a bottle that is brought to the grosser's workstation.

The information about that case will populate. Here you can see our demographics populated at the top. Some information about the case. We got some extra windows of information opening. Here we have attachments. We can envision this as our requisition that was scanned at order entry so that the grosser can reference that while they're working.

They don't need to have the physical paperwork in front of them when that travels to the lab. It can get damaged or lost, so here it will always be a convenient place for them. The other window that it can open is the history viewer. So here this is showing, you know, on this case there was also a lab.

This shows not only information from this same case, but also previous cases that are linked with this patient's history. Alternatively, if maybe you don't have a lot of screen real estate, both of these windows can open as additional tabs here, the same as we have Test Info and Images. Now I'm going to go to the Test Info tab.

Here, we'll find the site description as it was typed by the accessioner at order entry. And then the grosser is going to choose specific site area and operation options that match the specimen from the database that is loaded in this particular environment. So when I click here on the site, you'll see some are highlighted in green, I scroll down the others aren't.

Here, it is reading what was typed here, and it's bringing options that it thinks might match that to the top of the list. Let's go ahead and go with our first option. So you can see that populates our site and area. And then for operation, again, let's go ahead and choose Cone Biopsy. Here, when the operation was chosen, it prefills some additional linked information.

First of all is the grossing description. This is the like macro template dropped in this text. Here it automatically pulls the patient name and the specimen received text. And then this three question mark character is highlighted, prompting the grosser to fill in this value. Our LIS system uses this character to, as like a placeholder for values that need to be filled in.

They can use this keyboard on screen to fill it in, or a physical keyboard that they have. Say this is 5 centimeters. We can also see, linked to the colon biopsy operation, that some other information was applied via automation, a histology protocol, here that's one block and two levels, as well as an added CPT of 88305.

So now if we go back to our specimens tab, we will see that histology protocol that was added. The cursor can always manually apply a protocol in addition or instead of one that was automatically added. Then go to the stain table, see the full list of all the stains that the lab performs, and you can also include send out stains.

Here we can drag and drop additional specimens onto our cassette as needed. The grosser can enter how many pieces are going in this block, and we can even you know, specify which hopper this block should print at. Maybe all of our female reproductive cassettes should print onto pink cassettes, and those are loaded in hopper 1, so it can specify that.

And this is the most convenient time to print the cassettes. So the grosser would save and print the cassettes at this time. I'll go ahead and save now. It alerts me that I haven't printed the cassettes here at my home workstation, but that's okay. As soon as that's saved, all the cassettes will appear in the dedicated block queue, which is a real time queue of all the blocks that are waiting to be processed.

And all the slides will appear in the slide queue, their respective queue for processing. 

Now the next thing that I'll be looking at is the histology work log. So I'll tab over there. This is a log that it's like basically a detailed audit of specific histology actions that have performed from grossing to blocks to slides.

Open here, and you can see some of the steps that I have selected here. If things were scanned correctly at specimen verification, searching timestamps for when blocks were embedded, and such like that. Here you can see some from earlier. So, if for example, I go to the block queue, And I open my embedding window, and I scan a specimen that's not a block.

Here it says no block with that barcode. It's fine, no big deal. But the work log will track that information. So here it shows. The me, admin, scanned a block without this ID. Of course, there's time gate stamp associated with all of these actions. So, in this way, you can really easily see the exact order, how much blocks are processed, if a user, you know, scanned an incorrect barcode by mistake.

If there are any errors, it's going to have to be backtracked where that error may happen.

Also on the issue of error tracking, for error tracking we like to utilize what we call workflow actions. A workflow action can be thought of as a flag that is applied to a record. A record being a specific specimen, maybe a lab order, a report some of the most common ones. So here in the histology module let's say they are processing blocks.

And when they're in this processing window some issue is detected with this block. The user can go into the tags and workflow actions. They'll find pre configured options for issues that they might want to track. with this block. Maybe the tissue was too thick. We'll go ahead and add that on and then that will be tied to that block.

You can pull stats based on who added the tags, who processed blocks that had errors, and so on and so forth. I also have some configured in the block queue. You can also access them directly from here. Let's say, maybe there's a floater on this slide. The tags and reflections can be specific. You can, there were like different options in here for slides, different options in here for blocks.

Or especially with the specimens, they could be more general. Maybe you know, any specimen could be tagged with like the discovered patient name, for example. You can see in here we have both tag and workflow actions. These work very, very similar. The only difference is that a workflow action is going to be a little bit more robust.

This is going to facilitate a workflow. By adding this, then there will be a queue of all descriptive patient names that a user can then handle all at one time. And with the workflow action, the user can put in a comment, maybe you know, patient name spelled as Sarek. Something like that. And then again, I will show you at the end how to pull stats in accordance with these tags and workflow actions that have been added.

Tags and workflow actions can frequently be seen from the queues. Not all can. It depends on your preference. Maybe some are more for background logic, and some you know, you want to be in your face whatever That type of workable action will be used for. 

Now let's go on to case assignment and distribution. There are many opportunities to assign a case in the anatomic pathology LIS module. You might have noticed there was an opportunity on the grossing touch screen to do so. Another common time is to do it at slide completion. The user has the option to assign a pathologist but primarily we have dedicated case distribution queue.

So here you can, we'll see a full list of all of the results that are unassigned. And on the right you can see current caseload of the various pathologists. You can see the filters at the top which can be used to narrow down the list. For example, I had already pre filtered to the specific statuses I want to see.

This will, by default, show everything, but for my use, I don't want to see things that are still pending groups. In this queue, you know, we can see case type, you can configure weights for all of these cases, which can help you, you know, determine caseload for all of the various pathologists. And these filters here at the top, case type, state.

Prefix, client, and payer can all work in conjunction with pathologist preferences for the types of cases they should be reading. So for example, maybe, you know, the Florida pathologist is only certified in Florida and other states in that area. So if we pick, let's see, cases in California, our list will get filtered of cases as well by list of pathologists to pathologists that are eligible to read those cases.

So, even if you don't in this way, even if you don't filter the queue, and let's say I try to assign something to pathologists, if there's any conflict, you have the option of getting either a warning or a prevent. This is a prevent, so I don't have the option of assigning to them. Alternatively, it could.

Say, you know, just so you know, this pathologist isn't certified in this state, but the user will have the option to override it. So, in general, the method for assigning is to drag and drop cases across. Here, this one is a warn, right? So, our DERM plan isn't credentialed for GI cases. Would you like to assign it anyway?

If at any time you assign a case, you always have the option to undo it down here. Additionally, you can use the shift and control key on your keyboard to assign multiple cases at the same time. Say we'll assign all those to Petros. Now, right now, the stats mode over here on the right is incumulative.

These are all the cases that are currently assigned to these pathologists. The other option here is daily, just what's been assigned today. So you can see it only shows those which I just dragged over to Petros right now. Here we're going to get different additional columns of information, total case count in addition to just what was assigned today, number of blocks, number of cases that have either more than two blocks or less than two blocks, total block count, daily block count, the daily slide count.

Here it's also displaying information about the case types that have been assigned to these pathologists. The case types again, would be customized by you and whatever case types you want to work with. There are some defaults, such as like any clinical results or guidance cytology, as those are distinctive result types.

But otherwise, these would all be whatever makes sense for you. That particularly pertains to prefix, right? Prefix is a very you.

And then help ensure that cases are assigned to the right pathologists. In the Payer. menu, we'll have insurances. We need to filter to cash cases, for example, and see, you know, who wants to read cash cases and who doesn't. Same with client. Maybe we only want to see cases that are complete, and it'll filter.

The case is in real time. Let's assign another case so we can see how that compares the information. I'll just tab over to the pathologist setup for this quickly. So in the pathologist menu, all the users in the pathology lab software that are designated as pathologists. Here is where this case assignment credentials are configured.

Right, so here we have that this user has only certified in Florida. They can read, looks like all case types except for clinical. They don't have any prefix specifications, they don't have any client limitations, and then they do not want to read cash and patient pay cases. So this would all be set up by your LIS medical admin ahead of time so that when you are in the case distribution queue, all those rules are set up for that user already.

Now, let's look at QA and statistical reporting. First let's go to block stats, and I have a search template set up to show the grossing feedback tags that I showed adding at the, in the block queue, right? So we added some of these tags to some of our blocks here the each stats report is specific to an entity, so you can see I have block stats separate from slide stats, and we'll go through the other ones.

And I have it set to Embedded by Histotech so I can see, you know, of the six blocks that this user embedded in the set time period, the last 30 days four of them had tags added. We can see one, two, and three. As well this user Histotech did three blocks in this time period, and then only one of theirs has a tag, which we can see was for fixation.

In any of these charts, you know, you can print this as a, as a PDF for your records. You can also export these to Excel if you would like to do your own manipulation on it. There are additionally many more options for summary by, you know, I chose embedding histotech. Maybe it should be end processing, end processing histotech.

If we can refresh that and see some different data. Maybe you want to look not just the last 30 days, but the last 60 days. Once you adjust the filters to a configuration that you like, you can save this as a search template.

And then this will be in the drop down list so maybe you will instruct just your supervisors to come in here and pull your template, you know, at the end of each month. Let's go to slide stats now and see a similar report. For the slide tags that we added as this is the slide stats, the reports, the summary by the options you have for filtering here will vary slightly by the record that you are dealing with.

So here I have the tags report summary by completing HistoTec, completed within the last 30 days. You can also see a summary of that search here. So, anatomic pathology software Admin completed four slides in the last 30 days, and none of them had tags. Histotech completed 10, 7 of which had tags. We can go see those.

Also, whenever you see those details at the end, that means we can go to a list of those slides. We can go see the slides that, that Histotech completed in the filtered time period. And there are a lot of different options in here for Summary By. As well as these can be have multiple levels added.

Let's say you know, we are a large facility that also has many facilities. So we want to buy facility and then buy lab tech. We'll change it to a tree and refresh

and we'll get information about that.

Maybe we want to add cyber questing facility.

So we only have one facility in here that I primarily process. slides from. So it's just showing the one facility, right? And then we see the same demo ad in the same histotech underneath here, where there's another LIS healthcare facility. And then they will just be listed under here. So this can be a nice way to visualize the data as well.

Let's go to case stats now. This case stats, these are guidance cytology cases. In the guidance cytology LIS module, there are an even larger number of use reports. To work with, work with. Here, let's see. I had one, let's see, let's do our QC detail. So this is a QC detail report summary by cytotech.

We can see demo admin QC or no red primary screen. 50 cases in the time period, 28 of which required review and 22, which did not. 4 got forced review either most likely by, you know, they were abnormal results, which is configured to automatically go to review. And then, which left 18 for QC of the 10 that were QC'd 5 were required and 5 were random.

And we can see which percent, so for this user, 100 percent of their cases were QC'd. And for this user, none have been yet. So yeah, the, there are a lot more variety of reports in the guide module, just as a demonstration. The reports can vary. I think Cytotec is one that makes sense here.

Another good one here is like pathologist. Yeah. Now let's go to order stats. This will be like your accessions or your orders. Nice report here is client volumes, or which should show client volumes that they ordered over time. I was just missing that field designator there. So here we can see summary by client of the activity, which is like the number of orders received. It's broken up by month. We could also break it up, you know, by like quarterly or weekly, however you want to see this report.

You can easily tell I enter most test cases with this test client. So, you know, we received 13 orders for them in January, 28 in February, and so on and so forth. You can see the totals at the bottom, and we could adjust the months as you like. Then again, this was easily saved as a template, so it could be brought up easily in the future.

The other stats reports for order are what you see here. Let's see, another one, another good one, let's see, might be created user, that's going to be taken to main accessioner but yeah, most of them are done by the, the demo admin, which is the same user I'm logged in as right now. Final stats report I have to show is test result stats, so it's individual test results for your AP, it's pretty much going to be like one test per case, right, your surgical test, or your guide case, or.

ATT& CK only, those are all like one results, but for clinical, molecular, things like that, there's going to be multiple tests per case, so it's kind of the difference between the order and the test there. And, yeah, let's see, my abnormal volumes by test, right? So, received in the last 30 days from my clinical tests.

You can see what percentage of those were normal. So for example, you know, candy to albicans we received 5, and 1 was abnormal, which is 20% of all the candy to albicans. Candy to albicans was 2. 81 percent of all of the tests in this time period. So, at the bottom it'll always be 100. Of all the tests that were pulled, 0.

23 percent were abnormal. Which is a lot. Here in the test results and especially you're going to have a lot of different filters, you know, just show me data from a specific client just show me data about a specific test for example. The reports here it's common to, we have our turnaround times here which are pretty nice.

And then lots of different summary by options again, common options apply like client facility, pathologist things like that. And that is the last stats report that I have prepared to show you today. So at this time I will take any questions that you have. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: All right. Perfect. Very informative.

And I, I suggest at least for the moment keeping the pathology lab reporting software application open. For those attending, if you do have a question that you would like to ask Allison utilize the chat option at the bottom of your of your Zoom screen. And we can take the time whatever time is necessary to answer your questions.

I have some familiarity with this laboratory report software, but nowhere near what Allison has but I, I find it interesting sitting in on demonstrations and, and hearing what anatomical pathology software labs need and what they go through. You touched upon it earlier, the tags and workflow actions. It seems to me that they're so very flexible, so versatile.

Is it almost like, hey, we've got an issue. Is it the first place to look, plugging in tags and workflow actions? Is that fair to say? 

^{Allison Still}: Yeah, so I would definitely say that's our kind of first line of defense against issues. You know, every entity also has the option for free text notes if it's more informal.

But the text and word collections are very powerful, yeah, because you can pull all these stats on them. It's always going to record, you know, who added this and when, or who resolved this and when. No need to initial anything or I know with legacy LIS systems and legacy LIS software vendors, people are often like initialing these comments on like when they left it, but there's no need to do that kind of thing in our anatomic pathology LIS system.

_{Michael Kalinowski}: Awesome. All right. And we do have a couple of questions coming in. One is anatomical pathology software reports. Do you utilize CAP templates for these? 

^{Allison Still}: We do. We have an integration with CAP templates in our LIS software. You do have to have a subscription with CAP to be able to use those templates but if you do, basically they will provide you with some XML files, which can be imported in actually on the front end here.

You don't need to ask a developer to do it, though if you are one of our clients, we will update them on a schedule. If you're familiar with CAP templates, you probably know that they update them quarterly, so whenever they have updates, then we are also update them for our customers that use those. 

As far as using them in the laboratory information system LIS application, there's kind of what we call a wizard for walking through those. If we have time, we can show it, but I do feel like that probably would deserve its own session because it's a pretty comprehensive, but it'll walk you through answering all the questions that CAP has and which answers are required and which ones are not.

_{Michael Kalinowski}: I enjoyed the the look at the case distribution in the LIS software. One of the questions that we have here is when can case assignment happen? 

^{Allison Still}: It is honestly extremely flexible. It can kind of happen whenever is convenient for you. Again, I think for large labs, the devoted queue is the best option.

Though again, when any users like in the touch screen or in an individual result, they'll have the option to do it then. But any case that is unassigned will appear here. So it can happen as soon as the case is accessioned. Additionally, depending on your laboratory workflow, if it's not assigned and the pathologist opens it from their queue, it's going to just automatically assign to that user.

So maybe depending on the size of your organization, you don't need to do the full dedicated case distribution step. It's just very flexible depending on what works best for you in your lab. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: Next question. How does LigoLab platform work with voice recognition? This individual says they use 3M fluency direct. Is that compatible with legal lab platform? 

^{Allison Still}: LigoLab  is very compatible with voice recognition software. I personally am not familiar with the 3M, but the customers that I'm familiar with use Fusion Narrate and Dragon, and I know that those two work very well. The screens most common to use with that are the touchscreen, which I showed, as well as the pathologist resulting screen. We have numerous clients who'd use the dictation to, to drive the laboratory workflow on the screens in their entirety. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: Next question if one doesn't fill in the question in the canned text, what happens? Require entry? 

^{Allison Still}: It doesn't do that by default but we have written rules for clients in the past that like just a rule if it detects that there's like a three question mark and then there can be any kind of behavior based on that condition that you would like.

Maybe it just has a pop up for the user when they try to save or again maybe without a workflow action for someone to go back in to see that entire body text. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: Another question here, and please feel free to continue if you have any utilizing that chat option. Question is, from an integration standpoint, which EHRs can LigoLab integrate out of the box for bidirectional order and result exchange?

^{Allison Still}: LigoLab can integrate with any and all EHRs. We've never encountered a laboratory software system that we couldn't integrate with. We have numerous clients that have. EMR connections with any EMR you can think of. 

I'm trying to think of other interfaces types that we might accept, but... Yeah, that's a very customary part of our business. We have a dedicated department for handling integrations. And they do that all day, every day. They're experts in that. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: We do have an interface engine that is part of the platform and I can go through some of the formats. Essentially, as Allison suggested versatility when it comes to formats, HL7, obviously, and then let's see, FHIR, XML, X12, CSV or PDF, flat file, ASTM, RESTful API. So, I think we can say with confidence when it comes to integrating with other laboratory software systems, we feel pretty confident if it can be interfaced with, we certainly have the team and the expertise to do so.

Alright, I will give the people attending one last chance to utilize the chat. To throw in a question before we wrap up, and Allison, I see a question in the Q& A section from Dennis. 

^{Allison Still}: It’s about if we are fully integrated. So yeah, even though my presentation today focused on the AP portion of the pathology software application, Clinical Laboratory is also fully integrated.

You can see over here on the sidebar, even though I had all the tabs I wanted to show preloaded. All of these actions or screens were accessible here primarily on the sidebar as well as across the top so you can see it, yeah, there's devoted AP and clinical sections fully integrated and for example, when that patient history came up with the grossing, if there were any clinical or microbiology tests also associated with that period, that patient, you would also see them there at that time.

And then the same applies to lab RCM. It's fully integrated when the order succession is the 1st point to potentially enter lab billing information, and then all of that will flow downstream into the RCM module and RCM cycle. 

_{Michael Kalinowski}: And here's my opportunity. I'm a marketing guy, so I can throw this out. We like to think that we are the the one and only all in one laboratory informatics platform. We call our LIS system an informatics platform rather than a laboratory information system because a full integration one united database for LIS activity, lab revenue cycle management, a direct to consumer, something that was, was quite valuable during the course of the The recent pandemic with COVID, so we like to think that if you have a need for a laboratory solution within your laboratory facility LigoLab can certainly fill the need and be a good partner for you.

Well, with that, I think we have gone through the questions. Appreciate the attention that everyone showed during Allison's expert navigation of this LIS system. What we will do in the very near future is we will have a recorded version of this.

Oh, I see a question about enhancements. How do enhancement requests work? 

^{Allison Still}: It really depends on the scope of the request on how long it will take for us to implement and so our developers will assess that depending on the scale, yes, there might be some development charges associated with that, and then if you If you would like to pay for it, then we will work on it immediately, and it will become available to you as soon as we can roll it out, and you can test and approve it.

If it is not an urgent request, then usually it gets just rolled into our regular product pipeline, so it will get assessed with all the requests that we've had. And then any and all enhancements to the LIS pathology software platform are available to everyone as soon as they upgrade to that version. And it's true, you can see we are a versioned application and this is the latest version that I'm showing you.

Frequently the latest enhancements are only put into the newest version, so you might be required to do an anatomic pathology software update to get access to them.  

_{Michael Kalinowski}: That's a good subject. Can you paint the picture of what we recommend as far as LIS software updates over the course of a year? When are updates available and when should laboratory partners consider doing so? 

^{Allison Still}: Sure. So you can see this is 2023. 2. And the two, that second part there can be considered the quarters of the year. So in a given year there should be like four you know, 2023. 1, 2, 3, and 4. And so we're on 2 and we haven't closed out for 2 yet. So as soon as their version is what we call closed out at the end of the quarter, then it is eligible for clients to upgrade to it. You know, it really depends on the client when they might be interested in upgrading. Let's see, I would personally recommend upgrading at least once a year.

_{Michael Kalinowski}: And I think I missed this one earlier, so I apologize. But last question, is there an option for automated case assignment? 

^{Allison Still}: We can configure any number of rules and automation with our powerful rules and automation engine to assign those cases. We would work with you to figure out what conditions and criteria you might want for that. Again, is it based on just the criteria we have available by default, or maybe you have more complex logic so it'd be a custom option that we would work with you to form through our rules engine.

_{Michael Kalinowski}: Great questions. This is the first of what we hope to be many on a regular basis. Showing the anatomic pathology LIS, showing the clinical module, and show the lab RCM module.

Plenty to show, plenty to see, and plenty to demonstrate. So continue to tune in for what might be coming up next. Allison, I know your time and expertise are valuable so thank you very much for taking some time to field those questions expertly. 

^{Allison Still}: Absolutely. You're very welcome. And thanks everyone who had time to join. Glad to see so many attendees.

_{Michael Kalinowski}: If anybody here on this call has any follow up questions, utilize this email address right here, info@LigoLab.com. One thing we always are looking for is suggestions for future product tours and webinars.

With that thanks for all who attended. Allison, thank you very much for your input. 

Everybody have a wonderful day.