Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS)

eHealth Ontario is leading the implementation of the Ontario Laboratories Information System (OLIS) across the province as part of its ehealth strategy.

OLIS is a cornerstone information system that connects hospitals, community laboratories, public health laboratories and practitioners to facilitate the secure electronic exchange of laboratory test orders and results.

As a province-wide, integrated repository of tests and results, OLIS will contribute to fundamental improvements in patient care by providing practitioners with timely access to information that is needed at the time of clinical decision making.

eHealth Ontario is focusing its efforts over the next three years on three clinical priorities – diabetes management, medication management and wait times. These priorities are fundamental for building a comprehensive electronic health record for all Ontarians. OLIS is one component of the overall provincial strategy to improve diabetes management in Ontario.

Benefits

A laboratory information system for Ontario is an important component of an electronic health record.
The ability to electronically share laboratory test information helps health care providers make faster, better patient care decisions.

Patient benefits:

• Ensures fewer gaps in patient information as patients move between hospital, practitioner's office (e.g., family physicians, specialists), home care and long-term care settings.
• Provides an effective tool to integrate and track patient laboratory history over time, monitor progress of treatments and support chronic disease management (e.g. diabetes).
• Reduces the number of unnecessary laboratory tests due to greater availability and sharing of information.
• Enables timelier and broader access to laboratory test results by practitioners.

Health service provider benefits:

• Enables timely access to information for decision-making at the point of care.
• Facilitates more comprehensive and complete laboratory test information as produced by laboratories outside their organization.
• Provides better coordination of care between multiple practitioners and within health care teams.
• Improves workflow and reduces the dependency on paper-based systems.
  

Progress to date

The first phase of OLIS, the Foundation Adopter Program, is nearing completion. The program connected seven foundation adopters – four hospitals and three community laboratories. The four hospitals are Grey Bruce Health Services, Trillium Health Centre, Lakeridge Health Corporation and the University Health Network. Together, these organizations represent 23 hospital sites. The three community laboratories are CML HealthCare Inc., Gamma-Dynacare Medical Laboratories and LifeLabs LP. These seven organizations are currently loading their laboratory test results into the OLIS repository. They represent 52 per cent of the annual provincial laboratory's test volumes. OLIS has over 8,508,617 laboratory test results for approximately 7.7 million Ontarians in the OLIS database.

Implementation is underway to integrate the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion (OAHPP) laboratory information system for the purpose of submitting public health laboratory data into OLIS. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Program is conducting a pilot to conduct an assessment of OLIS for a clinical use by a primary care physician. Work has also begun with OntarioMD to certify EMR vendors for access to OLIS for clinical use. The first clinical use of OLIS data is now fully operational at the Ottawa Hospital.

OLIS has also made technology infrastructure enhancements to improve its operational availability.

Next steps

eHealth Ontario will focus on completing the outstanding activities for the foundation adopters;
plan the deployment for remaining hospitals and Labs and continue with planning, design and implementation activities for integration of OLIS to public health laboratories. The completion of the implementation activities required to feed laboratory data into OLIS in six hospital organizations in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in collaboration with five GTA Local Health Integration Networks through the ConnectingGTA project, is also underway. Planned rollout of OLIS functionality in EMR products will begin in summer of 2011, providing practitioners with access to OLIS clinical data within physicians offices.