Background

Sinochips Diagnostics is a Kansas City-based clinical and molecular reference laboratory specializing in comprehensive pharmacogenomics (PGx), COVID-19, flu PCR testing, women’s health panels, and molecular clinical trial services. Sinochips Diagnostics was founded in early 2019 by Jiawu Song, MD, Ph.D., Ziyan Pessetto, Ph.D., HCLD, and Andrew Godwin, Ph.D., who recognized how clinicians are constantly faced with unknowns and believe together they will create a quick path to answers.

The Challenge

Sinochips Diagnostics was originally focused on pharmacogenomics testing, but they pivoted in March 2020 to address the needs of the community by performing COVID-19 testing and even offering it to cancer patients at no cost. At first, the lab was temporarily using a manual process, knowing they would need to find a LIMS that would help them support more significant volumes of COVID-19 testing, as well as other types of molecular diagnostic testing.

Why Ovation?

After evaluating several LIMS solutions, Sinochips Diagnostics made the decision to work with Ovation. According to Ziyan Pessetto, Ph.D., who is the Chief Scientific Officer & Co-founder at Sinochip Diagnostics, “Ovation proved to be an excellent fit for us because they quickly built customized workflows for our lab and we easily adapted to the system.” Unlike other LIMS that Sinochips Diagnostics evaluated, the Ovation team was willing to be flexible and work with the lab to only use valuable aspects of the LIMS that were relevant right away, with the ability for expansion at a later time.

The Benefits

Early into implementing Ovation LIMS, Sinochips Diagnostics was impressed with Ovation’s quick implementation of out-of-the-box workflows and the ability to manage different workflows in the supply chain, each with customized reports.

Sinochips Diagnostics was also thrilled with Ovation’s flexibility when they needed to implement new assays that co-detect COVID-19 as well as influenza A and B. “This required adding one more workflow, but with Ovation’s help, these changes were easily managed every step of the way,” said Pessetto.

Sinochips Diagnostics has also discovered that Ovation’s ability to connect their cloud-based software to their billing system, as well as patient and provider portals, has been essential to “ensure seamless connectivity and interoperability.” It was extremely important to Sinochips Diagnostics that Ovation handled everything to set up the integrations, so they did not need to spend their valuable resources on creating data connections.

With Ovation in place, Sinochips Diagnostics has been able to hit a 24-hour turnaround time for COVID-19 testing for almost all of their tests, even while running a couple of thousand samples per day. Thanks to their ability to prove that they have a reliable, accurate, and fast COVID-19 testing process, Sinochips Diagnostics was one of 11 businesses chosen by the state of Kansas to implement robust statewide expansion of COVID-19 testing in November 2020.

Sinochips Diagnostics was awarded CAP accreditation in January 2021 and continues to set the standard for reference lab testing by achieving high reliability while providing quick results at a lower cost. Ovation has improved the lab’s productivity and efficiency so that they can continue to provide a high-touch customer experience, streamlined communication, and transparency throughout the process. “Bringing the Ovation system into our lab was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” said Pessetto.

To learn how Ovation can help your lab, reach us at [email protected].