Information technology to help with laboratory testing in primary care
Citation: Maillet E, Pare G, Currie LM, et al. Laboratory testing in primary care: A systematic review of health IT impacts. International Journal of Medical Informatics 2018; 116: 52-69
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What is this? Information technology (IT) plays an important role in supporting laboratory testing processes in primary care and existing research may provide evidence of relevance to testing for COVID-19.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for research on the impact of a specific IT system on the laboratory testing process in primary care. They restricted their search to studies published between 2000 and January 2018. They included 22 studies.
What was found: IT systems can help to provide primary care providers with easier access to test results, reduce turnaround times and increase their use of prescribed tests based on best practice guidelines.
The use of paper-based processes in parallel with IT systems increased the potential for medical errors due to cognitive overload for the primary care provider.
IT systems that are not viewed as reliable or user-friendly have a negative impact on the performance of primary care providers.
Organizational issues arose when results tracking relied on the memory of the prescriber.