Ontario Laboratories Information System

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 51 per cent of the annual provincial laboratory test volumes or about 270 million laboratory test results for approximately five million Ontarians in the OLIS database.

The health care sector has begun retrieving information from OLIS for health care and system planning (e.g. Cancer Care Ontario is using OLIS for the purpose of conducting clinical research).

Plans are 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.

Planning is also underway by the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Program to pilot an assessment of OLIS for a clinical use interface between a primary care physician’s clinical management system and OLIS.

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

Next steps

eHealth Ontario will focus on completing the planning and design phase for the integration of OLIS to public health laboratories and will complete any outstanding activities for the foundation adopters. It is also working on the completion of the implementation activities required to feed biochemistry 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.

OLIS will be rolled out for clinical use upon determination of eHealth Ontario’s designation under current legislation, providing it with the authority to make OLIS information available for such use.