New XiFin LIS 8 Helps Diagnostic Laboratories Scale and Respond to Changing Market Dynamics

New industry research findings inform LIS enhancements, supports digital transformation  

San Diego, Calif. – September 20, 2021 – XiFin, today introduced the newest iteration of its cloud-based laboratory information system (LIS), XiFin LIS 8, demonstrating the company’s continued investment in improving operational, clinical and financial outcomes for diagnostic providers. New feature development for XiFin LIS 8 is continually informed by customer and market input. Recently XiFin conducted a survey with responses representing approximately 100 U.S.-based labs. Results revealed their key needs, including digital transformation and better testing support. Informed by these findings, XiFin LIS 8 offers improved scalability, an enhanced role-based user experience, additional interface and configurability capabilities, digital pathology interoperability, and new document storage functionality that supports laboratory report sharing through the XiFin patient portal.

As COVID-19 swept across the country over the past year, laboratories have faced extraordinary challenges expanding their test menus and the resulting surge of testing volumes —peaking at 250% above baseline with some labs seeing volumes over 700% of baseline levels—emphasizes the importance of diagnostic data. Higher than normal volumes combined with the push towards remote laboratory testing accelerated the adoption of digital pathology – spotlighting the need for SaaS solutions to support this dynamic shift in how labs intake tests, increase throughput and better communicate test results. The need for increased testing capabilities, and the technology to support it, is becoming even more apparent with the prevalence of troubling COVID-19 variants.

“The past 18 months have shown us that technology, aligned correctly to capacity and operational needs, can be the differentiator in labs operating effectively during significant market disruption,” said Joe Nollar, AVP LIS Product Development, XiFin. “By having functional and reliable tools at their disposal, labs can stand up to new tests, scale up to meet rising demand and pivot workflow as necessary to align with changing pandemic requirements.”

New Capabilities in XiFin LIS 8 Help Labs Adapt to Current and Future Needs

According to a recent study conducted by XiFin, more than 30% of lab respondents indicated that their LIS had gaps in its ability to meet their testing needs or didn’t adequately support their testing needs. As labs look to invest in new SaaS technologies to handle fluctuating testing volumes as COVID-19 variants emerge, many are exploring options to expand both their test menus and the use of testing equipment to capitalize on early investments. XiFin LIS 8 provides the enhanced scalability and flexibility needed to accommodate menu expansions and capacity requirements.

XiFin LIS 8 is the only SaaS-based LIS solution on the market that can offer multi-specialty workflows, interoperability with artificial intelligence-driven digital pathology solutions, multi-system integrations, and the enterprise grade infrastructure, security and connectivity to make this a reality. Specific capabilities include:

• Greater Scalability: Labs gain the system scalability needed to handle some of the largest lab volumes in the country (approximately 100,000 daily accessions per performing lab).
• Integrated Digital Pathology: The new software works with the Concentriq^® digital pathology platform from Proscia^® and the latest Leica GT450 platform, providing pathologists with a streamlined, flexible workflow.
• Improved Connectivity: Enhancements include support for clinical trials through automated testing output for third-party consumption.
• Document Storage and Patient Portal Access: XiFin LIS 8 provides the ability for documents such as test results to be stored and subsequently published and accessed through the XiFin patient portal.
• Enhanced Configurability and Role-Based User Experience: The system offers set-up options by laboratory, job role or individual user along with worklist filter capabilities to quickly take the user to the precise data they want to see and allows clients to configure their own interfaces, reducing turn-around-times.
• Optimized User Experience: With redesigned case status screens, users can now see all relevant case information in one place – including client, patient and order information, concurrent cases, historic cases, billing information, case audit trails, tags, and workflow.

“With XiFin’s LIS offerings we will be able to scale our operations for future growth and integrate our lab information with our TissueCypher^® computational pathology workflow, creating a complete end-to-end solution,” said Dr. Rebecca Critchley-Thorne, Co-founder and CSO, Cernostics. “By implementing the Concentriq digital pathology platform from Proscia and integrating it with the XiFin lab information system, we will be able to rapidly scale our precision medicine business model and accelerate adoption of the TissueCypher Barrett’s Esophagus Assay, the world’s first precision medicine test to predict the risk of future development of esophageal cancer in patients with Barrett’s esophagus. The innovative end-to-end solution from XiFin and Proscia will also streamline collaboration amongst our multidisciplinary team of cancer biologists, artificial intelligence scientists, and pathologists to accelerate the development of the novel AI-driven precision medicine solutions in our pipeline.”

Survey Reveals Key Pain Points Among U.S. Diagnostic Labs

To understand market needs for laboratory information systems and to help build LIS 8, XiFin fielded a survey of U.S. diagnostic labs encompassing multiple specialties. A range of responses from approximately 100 labs revealed that reliability, scalability, and interoperability are challenging areas for many, and key pain points include:

• About a quarter (24%) of respondents indicated they are unsatisfied or highly unsatisfied with their organization’s current, non-XiFin LIS. This was consistent across technology vendors and lab type.

• Respondents were most dissatisfied with the ability of their organization’s LIS to create effective management reports.
• More than a quarter indicated there are known gaps in the LIS’s ability to meet their testing needs and 5% said their LIS didn’t support their testing needs well.
• Nearly one in five (19%) respondents indicated their organization was not operating on the most recent version of their organization’s LIS software. Nearly a quarter of (24%) respondents reported not knowing if their organization was on the current version of their LIS software.
• Nearly one in four (24%) respondents reported being unsure about the security of their organization’s LIS or if their LIS has known vulnerabilities.

Lack of awareness of software versions and security are of particular concern. Given the sensitivity and value of healthcare data, any lack of knowledge of known vulnerabilities in healthcare information technology security poses too great a risk to tolerate. Cloud-based technology solutions, such as XiFin LIS 8, enable organizations to have confidence that they are always using the most up to date version of their LIS software.

Please visit https://www.xifin.com/LIS8 to request your copy of the upcoming State of the US Laboratory Information Systems research report.

About XiFin

XiFin is a healthcare information technology company that leverages diagnostic information to improve the quality and economics of healthcare. The company’s cloud-based technology facilitates connectivity and workflow automation for accessing and sharing clinical and financial diagnostic data, linking healthcare stakeholders in the delivery and reimbursement of care. The company provides cross-specialty industry analytics including its Lab Volume Index which provides a measurement of laboratory testing volumes across the US. Its synthesis of diagnostic data enables comparisons of hospital, genetics, pathology, routine lab, COVID-19, and antibody testing across key segments. To learn more, visit www.xifin.com, follow XiFin on Twitter and LinkedIn, or subscribe to the XiFin blog.