The number of laboratories specializing in molecular diagnostics has increased dramatically in recent years. This is a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in combination with the rapid evolution of the capabilities and applications of molecular diagnostics.

Even before the pandemic began, molecular diagnostics were already well established as a preferred alternative to traditional diagnostic methods for many infectious diseases due to the increased accuracy and speed of its techniques. Fast forward to a world that has experienced a global pandemic. Many more labs have the tools and the infrastructure to perform this complex testing. Modern testing techniques, fast turnaround times, and superior customer service may not be enough for your lab to beat the competition as much as you did before.

So what does dominance in molecular diagnostics look like?

One way for your lab to differentiate is to go beyond identifying disease and become an integral part of therapy decisions. As novel applications of molecular testing expand, so do the complexity of these tests. Research shows that less than 50% of physicians feel confident in their ability to interpret molecular test results. A mere 10% are confident in their ability to use test results to guide them when prescribing treatment. Your lab can serve a valuable role by aiding in the diagnosis and the interpretation of the results so that physicians can responsibly prescribe the optimal treatment regimen to the patient.

This is an invaluable service that—in the experience of our customer labs— is met with thunderous applause by data-driven physicians who are looking for patient-specific information to help guide their decisions. That’s why we formed a partnership and built an integration between Ovation and Arkstone, the leading provider of molecular laboratory infectious disease reporting and proactive antimicrobial stewardship.

So here’s how your lab can get started:

How to Provide Clinical Interpretation with your Microbial Diagnostic Results

Step 1: Obtain a Molecular LIMS

If you expect to turn infectious disease results around quickly and accurately, the best place to start is by obtaining a LIMS/LIS that specializes in the complexity of molecular diagnostic testing. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many LIMS companies rushed to add molecular testing to their suite of testing capabilities. This has led to cumbersome and redundant workflows—full of unavoidable spreadsheet workarounds that slowed lab teams down. Even worse, individuals at the LIMS company may not understand what your lab is fundamentally trying to accomplish and continue to rely on your personnel to educate them. 

Ovation is the only cloud-based LIMS built to support molecular testing. As a result, we bring you tools and solutions that help you dominate this lucrative testing discipline. Ovation offers simple out-of-the-box workflows that can be customized to work one-to-one with your lab’s specific procedures. Diagnostic labs using Ovation LIMS have seen success in several ways, including lowering failure rates, training staff in hours instead of days or weeks, boosting productivity, and reducing turnaround times.

Step 2: Obtain an Antibiotic Recommendation Provider that Works with your LIMS

The only way that your lab can provide infectious disease result interpretation quickly and at scale is with an antibiotic recommendation service. Employing or contracting with board-certified pharmacists to review test results is often too expensive and inefficient. Plus, physicians know the patient best and prefer to come to their own conclusions, so they’re still expecting information that will help them do that, which a pharmacist is unlikely to provide.

Arkstone’s OneChoice decision engine analyzes the patient’s detected pathogens, resistance genes, and other patient information to provide an optimal treatment regimen recommendation. Arkstone enables the lab to deliver the recommendation in a clean one-page report that lists the plan. Plus, a QR code leads to OneChoice Plus, a comprehensive site with translation to other languages, further explanation and links to reference materials. Additionally, with the included MedsMatrix, physicians can dig into the data to clearly understand the different treatment options and gain some insight into how the OneChoice decision engine came to its conclusions.

Step 3: Integrate Your Antibiotic Recommendation Provider with your LIMS

For this service to operate successfully, your antibiotic recommendation provider needs to be seamlessly integrated with your LIMS. This is where the close partnership between Ovation and Arkstone is extremely helpful to labs. Because Ovation and Arkstone have already built a seamless integration between the two systems, you’ll skip several implementation steps and can start sending your providers therapy recommendations in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

“By tightly integrating Arkstone into Ovation’s LIMS, labs can get up and running with the OneChoice report in no time, seamlessly allowing them to offer superior reporting to their customers with minimal effort,” said Dave Gross, Chief Technology Officer of Arkstone.

Once the integration is set up, here’s how Arkstone works together with the Ovation LIMS:

1. Ovation LIMS automatically sends the infectious disease test results with the patient’s detected pathogens, antibiotic resistance genes (ABRs), allergies, and other demographic information to Arkstone’s software for analysis once the QC step in your workflow is completed. 
2. Arkstone uses its artificial intelligence engine to return a single-page PDF patient report with a therapy recommendation back to Ovation LIMS.
3. Your lab signs and sends the provider the combined report with one click, just as you would any other report.

An example of the Ovation LIMS + Arkstone OneChoice combined report

“Integrating Ovation with Arkstone has had a massive impact for the labs that we work with. The ability to provide actionable results to clinicians quickly enables labs of all sizes to compete with the biggest reference labs out there. The time to treatment is remarkable.”

Lee Schmidt, PhD
Chief Science Officer and Partner at Clear Lab Consulting Solutions.

Want to learn more? Attend our upcoming webinar with Arkstone!

We’re confident that your lab’s ability to quickly provide actionable, trusted information through result reports will win you new provider business and increase your lab’s utilization.

Of course, there are a few strategic components you’ll want to consider before rolling out your therapy recommendations, including considering which providers will benefit the most, how to direct questions they have about the recommendations, and more.

If you’re interested in learning more about these best practices, sign up for our upcoming webinar with Arkstone on April 5, 2pm EST. Here’s what you can expect to hear about:

1. Why your lab should be providing antibiotic treatment recommendations
2. How your LIMS/LIS and antibiotic treatment recommendation providers optimally work together
3. Best practices for marketing this offering to providers
4. How to effectively rollout and manage the service with your provider clients
5. The characteristics of provider clients who will benefit the most

Sign Up Today!

If you’re ready to add Arkstone to Ovation LIMS, contact your Ovation Account Manager and let them know that you’re interested in adding the integration.

Not using Ovation LIMS yet? Visit www.ovation.io/arkstone-partner to get started.