Laboratory News

HL7 Takes Over ELINCS to Ensure Lab Data and EHR Interoperability

Getting laboratory test data to flow smoothly across the spectrum of providers has always been a major challenge. That was true in California in recent years, when efforts by two prominent health organizations to encourage better management of chronic diseases ran squarely into the problem that physicians could not easily pass along laboratory test data to other physicians when making a patient referral.

Thus was born the “ELINCS” effort. The goal was to improve the ability of electronic health records (EHRs) to receive and pass along laboratory information systems (LISs). The resulting set of standards is called ELINCS  (EHR-Lab Interoperability and Connectivity Standards). ELINCS has developed a national standard for the delivery of real-time laboratory results from a lab's information system to an electronic health record.

California HealthCare Foundation  (CHCF) began work on a set of standards called Calinx a few years ago in an effort to get outcome data for quality improvement and pay-for-performance efforts.  CHCF spent most of 2005 working with laboratories, providers, and payers to develop a national implementation guide based on messaging standards from health IT standards group Health Level Seven  (HL7).

In 2006, CHCF launched five pilot projects in California that involved Quest Diagnostics Incorporated  (NYSE:DGX) and Laboratory Corporation of America (NYSE:LH), as well as EHR products such as GE Centricity  and AllScripts Touchworks.  “We wanted to see whether ELINCS is appropriate for use in live clinical information exchange,” said Sophia Chang, M.D., director of the foundation's Better Chronic Disease Care program.  Once it deemed the pilots successful, CHCF sought an adoptive parent for ELINCS. “It made the most sense to hand this off to an appropriate standards development organization,” Chang explains.

It was announced in December 2006 that HL7 would adopt and maintain the ELINCS.  HL7 is one of several American National Standards Institute  (ANSI) -accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena.  The work on ELINCS is taking place in pilot projects, and vendors and providers are discovering its constraints, says Bill Braithwaite, an independent health information policy consultant in Washington, D.C.  “It's important to vendors that they have one standard they can work with, instead of three or four,” he says.

For providers, easier access to lab data may speed the widespread adoption of EHRs.  For laboratories, the ELINCS set of standards is an important consideration in the adoption of any new laboratory information system.  Laboratories should track the acceptance and adoption by physicians and information technology companies of ELINCS.

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