Enhanced Data Management System Synchronizes Workflow and Expands Connectivity

Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics has enhanced its CentraLink™ Data Management System, a lab process management solution that consolidates patient and quality-control data from multiple instruments and provides centralized control over critical lab processes. New functionality synchronizes automation workflow to increase efficiency and quality, as well as expanding connectivity.

Today’s fast-paced clinical laboratories – striving to meet the needs of clinicians who depend daily on accurate information from in vitro diagnostic tests – remain challenged to increase efficiency, improve productivity and do more with less. This often results from the continued reliance on manual processes and different, disconnected IT systems. CentraLink helps laboratories overcome the hurdles caused by lack of IT system integration by serving as a single communication link between the laboratory information system (LIS), instruments, automation system(s) and multiple users within the central laboratory or across multiple locations.

Siemens’ latest CentraLink version (v14) builds upon these benefits by delivering expanded connectivity to multiple LIS, plus the Bio-Rad Unity System. It also can now detect if an instrument connected to an automation track is offline, and will automatically re-route samples to another available instrument, thereby contributing to improved turnaround time. Enhanced workflow is achieved via a new automated sample status feature that tracks arriving samples in real time, enabling labs to create custom counters (such as those for troponin) for faster results. Managing lab processes is also easier thanks to proactive quality control (QC) alerts that flag QCs set to expire. CentraLink v14 can also be customized to the end user, speeding up system access and supporting error reduction among staff.

“CentraLink is a huge advantage – one interface across all instruments,” said Marilyn Leonard, Laboratory Manager, White Plains Hospital, White Plains, N.Y. “The new version is overall more efficient, and we’ve been able to improve turnaround time, which the clinicians, especially those in the emergency department, really appreciate.”