Data warehousing and information management strategies in the clinical immunology laboratory

Abstract

Clinical laboratory immunology has evolved over the past 20 years as an important laboratory subspecialty that provides integrated data and data interpretation for clinicians dealing with diseases and processes that manifest immunologic anomalies such as immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, lymphoproliferative disease, allergy, infectious disease and tissue transplantation. In all of the foregoing, immunology test results are key to patient diagnosis and management.Clinical laboratory immunologists are tasked with the efficient management of client demands, data, personnel, costs and time. The development of a laboratory data warehouse provides easy access to accurate and relevant medical and business data that can enable physicians and laboratorians to make more informed decisions not only in patient diagnosis and management, but also in day-to-day operations and strategic planning.With respect to interactions with physicians regarding their patients, the data are loaded every day into the data warehouse making it available in a timely and user-friendly manner. This capability becomes particularly valuable when evaluating and/or discussing patients whose disease has evolved over time or who have visited multiple physicians. It also generates the opportunity to suggest or discourage tests, to observe trends on a single patient or population of patients, and to recognize the correlation between results of different tests. Our goal is to optimize the efficient utilization of laboratory results and integrated clinical data, to assist physicians in the diagnosis, management and prognostication of their patients, and to assess the cost and enhance the cost-effectiveness of laboratory testing.