Lab Matters Spring 2024 | Page 25

INFORMATICS workforce capacity and expertise , partner engagement , and long-term operation and maintenance . The issues associated with disjointed ETOR approaches will be mitigated by national and centralized intermediary solutions . Intermediaries improve the technical expertise , infrastructure , and resources available to public health laboratories , while removing the burden of building their own independent workforce , infrastructure and solutions with varying degrees of success .

Newborn Screening : A First Use Case

The first year of implementation for the ETOR intermediaries focused on establishing ETOR for newborn screening ( NBS ) between selected laboratories and their healthcare partners . Approximately 4 million babies in the United States are screened every year for several rare conditions . Although the panels vary slightly by state , the overwhelming impact is the same — most of these potentially fatal conditions are treatable when detected early . When delays can be deadly or devastating , the ability for a healthcare provider to seamlessly connect to the public health laboratory responsible for conducting the newborn screening test is paramount . But many healthcare providers still submit NBS orders via mail and receive results by fax ; these manual methods require duplicative data entry , increasing the likelihood of human error and inaccuracies . These manual methods are time-consuming , error-prone , and delay the availability of results . When healthcare providers and their public health laboratory partners establish ETOR , they ensure that test orders and the affiliated data will be sent to the laboratory as soon as it is populated into the patient ’ s chart . The laboratory can begin to schedule , track and prepare for accessioning the sample that they know is on its way . When the test is complete , the results are sent back electronically in near real time , ensuring that potentially life-saving information is in the hands of those who need it to take action as soon as possible . g