HEALTH minister Horace Dalley on Wednesdday signed a US$1-million contract with United States-based STALIMS Corporation for the provision of a laboratory information system (LIS) that will electronically link five Corporate Area government labs by February 2007.

According to Dalley, the electronic system is expected to reduce costs to government for laboratory tests as it will foster speedier transmission of results to physicians, thus increasing efficiency.

“You cannot in this day and age deliver good health care to your people unless you have a backbone in IT (information technology) to support that,” the minister said during the contract signing ceremony at the ministry’s King Street headquarters, downtown Kingston.

He said although the health sector is equipped with trained medical personnel, there is still a need for adequate technologies to supplement the services offered by the health sector.

“I saw it first-hand with the recent outbreak of malaria. I saw the pressure that was on the one laboratory that we have. If we had systems in place to use technology we would have been much better off and we would have gotten results easier,” he explained.

LIS is a software which handles receiving, processing and storing information generated by medical laboratory processes. It will enable the labs to track samples from source, through to the testing process, into storage and ultimately to sample disposals. This process will be enabled through the assigning of bar codes to the samples on receipt. The reports generated will show a history of past test results and combine results from different disciplines to one report, giving a better view of a patient’s condition.

The system is being jointly funded by the World Bank and the Jamaican Government through its National HIV/STI Control Prevention Programme and will be initially implemented at the National Public Health Lab (NPHL) and National Blood Transfusion Service (Blood Bank) by the end of December.

The system is expected to be implemented in another three labs – the Victoria Jubilee Hospital Cross Match Lab, the Kingston Public Hospital Emergency Lab and the Comprehensive Health Centre — by February next year. The hub of the LIS will be hosted at the NPHL and the Blood Bank.

The project management unit, which will be housed at the NPHL, has been staffed with a project coordinator as well as representatives from the relevant departments of the NPHL, including the Blood Bank.

On Wednesday, STALIMS’ CEO Isaac Friedman said

his company has implemented between 25 and 30 systems worldwide.

“I am hoping that Jamaica will be able to monitor and treat public health in a much better way,” he said. “Health givers will have access to tests and accurate information.”