Clinical Laboratory & Diagnostics in India & MENA

In my visits to most small to medium clinical laboratories, I have noticed that there is widespread use of personal computers. Almost every lab has 2-3 PCs that are used for Internet access, email, documents and printing. Clearly the concept of a PC to improve personal productivity and communication has caught on and is well understood by most laboratory workers. Some labs are also using the PC and a simple spreadsheet or database program to print their reports.

If this describes your laboratory accurately, it may be time for you to consider using a network and a ‘Server’ in a topography described as a ‘Client-Server’ environment. Some of you will be introduced to the network and the client-server environment by LIS vendors , but you may find that the solutions that they propose are expensive and may not fit your requirements exactly.

Actually, if you are comfortable with using a PC, installing operating systems like Windows XP or Vista and other programs a good option for you may be to start off creating a network and setting up a ‘Small Business’ kind of network yourself. Some of these programs come with very good out-of-the-box functionality and you may not even need to pay for expensive custom-built or line-of-business applications.

In my next few blogs, I will try and describe how to go about creating your own network and client-server system and how to get the maximum benefits from your investments in information technology.

First, how do you know that you need a network? If you answer yes to one or more of the following questions, then you need one:

·         Are there 3 or more PCs in your laboratory?

·         Do you and your co-workers share files or work on the same document?

·         Does your work get impacted if one or more PCs in your lab stops working?

·         Do you have a database program. This can even be a simple list of contacts – do you and your co-workers have your own versions of the contact list in your own PC?

·         Are you considering getting accredited and need to manage a large number of documents in the lab such as SOPs & quality documents?

Next, I will post the basics of getting a client-server network in place – what hardware and software you need? How much it will cost? What are the applications you can use it for?

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please do send in your comments.

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have decided to spend three days attending the Microsoft TechMela being held at Mumbai from the 14^th – 16^th June. This is a great event and has high energy with about 2,000 mostly young developers participating enthusiastically in the technical sessions and trying out moves on the six Xbox 360 gaming consoles installed in the foyer.

What impressed me about Microsoft is that the company having just had a major launch of Vista and Office 2007 is already planning and preparing for the launch of its new products – more about these later. Truly, this is a company that not only has the ability to anticipate future trends, but also the clout make them happen.

From Day 1, the major takeaways from the sessions were:

·         The next major inflection point in software development is here – from products and applications for individual PCs to the client – server environment to Internet and now on to service oriented applications.

·         The Internet has now evolved to the next version – Web 2.0 – with a huge number of applications and services available on the Internet. User created content is on the rise.

·         There seems to be a conscious move by industry leaders to work towards convergence – the PC, the Mobile Phone and the TV will soon be working in a truly interconnected way – a change that could happen sooner than you think – A Unified Communications strategy is very much on the cards from Microsoft.

·         Hardware performance will continue to improve – no end in sight yet. This is being driven by even higher amounts of digital information being created every second – from data to images to audio and video.

·         I was impressed by the focus on a technology called ‘virtualization’ in which a single piece of hardware such as a PC or a Server can run multiple operating systems and environments. This is being made possible by advances on both the hardware and the software front.

·         More and more analog devices will shift to the digital format – it was music and photographs at first – now it seems to be the turn of the telephone. The speakers were of the opinion that since digitization supports software advances, the pace of change of the technology could be very rapid indeed and the world’s telecom network may be in for a major overhaul soon.

·         Broadband connectivity is improving in all countries of the world and so is mobile phone usage – this is potentially very disruptive to many companies and business models.

Like most other industries such as telecommunications, financial services and manufacturing, healthcare is not immune to these changes that are on the anvil. Surely better communication, lower total cost of ownership and better interoperability between disparate systems can only benefit our industry.

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have just made it easier to subscribe to the 'Clinical Laboratory & Diagnostics in India' feed.

First get an account with either Google (iGoogle) or Yahoo (MyYahoo). You can make this your home page.

Go to http://blog.labnetworx.com. Scroll down and click on the '+ My Yahoo' or 'Add to Google' button.

That's it, you are now subscribed.

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

RSS is a technology that adds a lot of value to the browsing experience. I subscribe to quite a few feeds such as CNN, Wired, Register, Guardian as well as Bruce Friedman's Lab Soft News and am able to scan all the important news snippets in minutes. 

If you do not use RSS already, here is a great way to start.

A simple way of subscribing to an RSS feed is to use a 'reader' like the Google Reader.Get a gmail account if you don't already have one. Sign in to the Google site.

Go to http://www.google.com/reader and click on 'Add Subscription'. In the box that opens up, enter blog.labnetworx.com and you are done. This feed gets added to your subscriptions on the left panel.

Also see my blog on using Firefox to subscribe to RSS feeds posted here http://labnetworx.com/blog/2007/05/subscribe_to_rss_feeds_using_f.html

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 are two browsers that are available as free downloads on the Internet that allow you to easily subscribe to RSS feeds and make it a part of your internet experience.

This post shows you how easy it is to subscribe to the Clinical Laboratory & Diagnostics Blog using the Firefox browser.

Step 1: Download the Firefox Browser from this website, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Step 2: Install the browser

Step 3: In the address bar, type the address of the blog, http://blog.labnetworx.com . Since this website has RSS feeds, you will notice an orange RSS icon in the address bar. Click on it to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Having finally got around to the phenomenon of blogging, I now find it a very interesting and worthwhile way of communicating with my fellow lab professionals.

Over the past two years since I started up Labnetworx, it has been a privilege to work with a number of clients, partners and friends and sharing with all of them a great professional relationship.

This blog belongs to the clinical laboratory and diagnostics industry in India and I will be inviting interested professionals to post their thoughts and ideas on this blog or comment upon some of the issues presented here. I find that each one of my contacts is a veritable storehouse of knowledge and this is a great way of all of us benefiting from each other.

For a start I have introduced four categories for the blogs: (1) Information Technology as it applies to the Clinical Lab (2) Laboratory Technology (3) Medical Significance of Tests and (4) The Business of Labs. I will add more categories in the future.

So welcome to the blog and happy posting!

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Alternate methods of result delivery, such as email, Internet and SMS, are making an apperance and are being used by many labs in addition to the traditional printed reports.

Posted by Sunil Tadepalli at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)