How to Choose the Right Laboratory Information System: A Decision Maker’s Guide

Selecting a new Laboratory Information System represents one of the most consequential decisions a laboratory leader can make. This choice will ripple through your operations for years to come, influencing every test, every result, and ultimately, every patient experience. With so much at stake, a methodical approach becomes essential.

Building Your Foundation: Essential Groundwork

The journey toward the right LIS begins with assembling a comprehensive selection team. Laboratory management brings operational insights, key technologists understand workflow requirements, IT representatives evaluate technical compatibility, quality assurance staff ensure compliance considerations, and finance decision-makers provide budgetary perspective. This collaborative approach ensures all critical viewpoints inform your decision—each perspective matters in creating a complete evaluation.

Step 1: Assess Your Current Laboratory Environment

Before exploring new solutions, gaining clarity on your current state provides crucial context. Begin by evaluating your existing pain points: identify processes that consistently slow your workflow, pinpoint where errors most frequently occur, determine which tasks consume disproportionate time resources, and understand what specifically frustrates your staff during daily operations.

Analyze your current volumes to establish baseline requirements. Document daily test counts across departments, understand peak period demands that stress your systems, review growth trajectories based on historical data, and evaluate whether staffing levels align with these patterns.

Review your integration landscape thoroughly. Map all connected systems that interact with your laboratory data, document specific data exchange requirements for each connection, identify interface issues creating current challenges, and anticipate future connection needs as your technology ecosystem evolves.

Step 2: Define Your Feature Requirements Strategically

Creating a prioritized feature framework helps distinguish between true necessities and appealing but optional capabilities. Start with essential features—the core functionality without which your laboratory cannot operate effectively, critical regulatory requirements for your specific testing environment, mandatory integrations with existing systems, and basic security needs to protect sensitive data.

Next, identify important features that significantly enhance operations without being absolute requirements. These typically include workflow improvements that streamline processes, efficiency boosters that save staff time, quality management tools that enhance compliance, and reporting capabilities that provide operational insights.

Finally, document nice-to-have features that would add value but aren’t critical to your decision. These might include advanced analytics for deeper data insights, additional automation capabilities beyond core needs, future-oriented capabilities aligned with strategic plans, and enhanced user experience elements that improve satisfaction.

Step 3: Plan for Future Growth

Tomorrow arrives faster than anticipated in laboratory environments. Build scalability considerations into your evaluation process by assessing how each system handles volume increases as testing demand grows, accommodates new test types as your menu expands, supports additional locations if your organization grows geographically, enables expanding services into new areas, and adapts to staff growth without performance degradation.

Step 4: Conduct Comprehensive Vendor Evaluation

Look beyond the software itself to evaluate the organization behind it. Assess company stability through years in business, financial health indicators, market reputation among peers, and client retention statistics that demonstrate satisfaction.

Support services often differentiate leading vendors from adequate ones. Evaluate the depth of implementation assistance provided, comprehensiveness of training programs for various user roles, technical support availability including hours and response times, and update frequency that indicates ongoing development commitment.

The user community surrounding a system provides invaluable resources. Consider the size of the existing user base which influences vendor responsiveness, availability of user groups for knowledge sharing, community support mechanisms for problem-solving, and opportunities for collaborative improvement.

Step 5: Calculate Total Cost of Ownership

A complete financial picture requires looking beyond initial purchase price. Document all initial costs including software licenses and their structure, hardware requirements necessary for optimal performance, implementation fees covering professional services, and training expenses for your team.

Ongoing costs create the longest-term financial impact. These include annual maintenance fees that support continued operation, support contracts providing technical assistance, update costs for new versions and features, and training expenses for new staff as your team evolves.

Hidden costs frequently surprise unprepared organizations. Account for interface development needs with existing systems, customization requirements specific to your workflows, additional modules for specialized functions, and infrastructure upgrades necessary to support the new system.

Step 6: Validate Through Reference Checks

Current users provide the most unfiltered perspective on real-world performance. During reference conversations, explore their implementation experience from start to finish, ongoing support quality beyond the sale, system reliability during daily operations, whether promised features were actually delivered, and how effectively problems were resolved when they arose.

Asking specific questions yields the most valuable insights: “How long did implementation actually take compared to estimates?” “What surprised you most about the system or vendor?” “What would you do differently if starting over?” and “How responsive is support when critical issues occur?”

Step 7: Prioritize Security and Compliance

Laboratory data demands rigorous protection. Verify that each potential system provides comprehensive HIPAA compliance mechanisms, robust data encryption both in transit and at rest, granular access controls aligned with role-based requirements, detailed audit trails that track all system activities, reliable backup systems with regular testing, and documented disaster recovery processes that ensure business continuity.

Step 8: Develop a Realistic Implementation Plan

Implementation success depends on thorough planning. Consider staff availability during critical project phases, comprehensive training needs across different user roles, data migration complexity from existing systems, parallel running requirements to ensure continuity, and go-live support that provides immediate assistance during transition.

Making the Final Decision: Bringing It All Together

Creating a weighted scoring matrix provides objective comparison. Include feature alignment with your specific requirements, total cost considerations across the system lifecycle, support quality based on reference feedback, implementation plan feasibility, future readiness for anticipated changes, and comprehensive reference feedback from existing clients.

Critical Success Factors for Implementation

Several factors consistently determine implementation success. User buy-in establishes the foundation for adoption, comprehensive training directly correlates with effective utilization, ongoing support quality determines issue resolution, scalability ensures your investment remains viable as requirements grow, and robust integration capability drives overall laboratory efficiency.

Warning Signs That Deserve Attention

Certain red flags warrant immediate caution. These include unclear pricing structures that may hide costs, limited support hours that could leave you vulnerable, weak or inconsistent reference feedback from current users, inadequate implementation planning that risks project success, and inflexible systems that cannot adapt to your specific workflows.

Preparing for Next Steps

With evaluation complete, several actions propel your project forward. Download our detailed evaluation checklist for day-to-day guidance, schedule vendor demonstrations with your complete team, prepare your staff for the upcoming change through regular communication, and develop a realistic implementation timeline that accounts for all critical phases.

Want a comprehensive guide to LIS selection and implementation? Download our “ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SCALING YOUR LAB” for in-depth insights and practical tools. [Download Now]