DarkDaily | New Player in Market for LIS Products Acquires Orchard Software
Sale of respected laboratory information system company may be an early sign that investors believe clinical laboratories and pathology groups are ready to upgrade their LISs and add needed capabilities
In the past 10 years there has been little disruption to the laboratory information systems (LIS) market that clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups use. Yet, over that same 10-year period, almost every hospital and physician group practice adopted an electronic health system (EHR), primarily because of federal financial incentives that encouraged such adoption.
For medical laboratories and pathology groups, this widespread—nearly universal—adoption of EHRs by the nation’s hospitals and physicians was disruptive. Labs were required to expend resources building digital interfaces to the EHRs of their parent hospitals and client physicians to support electronic test ordering and test reporting.
However, because that wave of EHR adoption is now over, clinical labs and pathology groups have an opportunity to assess the current state of the health information technology (HIT) that they use daily, primarily in the form of the classic laboratory information system that handles nearly all the primary functions needed to support testing and other operational needs.
