Orchard Harvest™ LIS Version 6.5 Press Release

Orchard Software’s laboratory information system, Orchard Harvest LIS, leads the industry in flexibility and ease of use, and the ever expanding set of features make Harvest LIS a valuable tool for a wide variety of laboratories.

“We’re excited about the many new features in Harvest LIS version 6.5, and based on feedback from our customers, we’ve added more flexibility and power to existing features as well. Our goal is to make easy-to-use software that helps lab professionals improve their workflow and contribute to quality patient care,” says Debbie Schilling, Director of Software Engineering at Orchard Software.

With 273 features added to Harvest LIS version 6.5, Orchard is continuously enhancing its system to meet the changing needs of its clients and the healthcare industry. Many features in this version have been added to meet the demands of small- to medium-sized hospitals.

“Our newly expanded team of developers, testers, and technical writers has tackled the more complicated features, while preserving compatibility with existing databases and maintaining our famous user-friendly interface,” says Jeffrey Kain, Executive Vice President.

Harvest LIS version 6.5 offers flexible printing and faxing options for automatic result delivery. Physicians can request STAT and ASAP orders to print or fax immediately upon approval while all ROUTINE orders are printed or faxed at a scheduled time, thus saving time and unnecessary trips to the printer or fax.

With the option to schedule automatic, unattended runs of the Data Browsers, data can be exported to a file on a specific workstation, displayed on the window of a specified workstation, or print on a specified workstation’s default printer. This new feature enables system administrators to schedule daily, monthly, and yearly reports in advance.

Nicole Carter, Marketing Product Manager for Orchard Software says, “The addition of Supply Management in Harvest LIS version 6.5 makes it very easy to manage the usage, ordering, and inventory of supplies in the laboratory, eliminating the need for paper logs.”

Information on new lots of reagents and other laboratory supplies, including the lot number; quantity; and dates received, opened, closed, and expired, can be entered in Supply Management. This is useful for entering notes for a particular lot number and updating the quantity of a lot as the supplies are placed in use. With a click of a mouse, an inventory report showing total quantity, low quantity, and near-to-expiration can be generated.

Other enhancements to Harvest LIS version 6.5 include:

• Microbiology can be configured to bill automatically, including IDs and sensitivities, eliminating manual steps and saving time.
• With the new Hematology enhancements, up to 50 manual differential layouts per order choice can now be configured, assigning defaults to individual users.
• Many existing reports have been enhanced with new configuration options, saved criteria, and new filtering options. The Billing Summary Report, Test Utilization Report, Order Choice Utilization Report, Turnaround Time Report, and the Draw List have all received updates to allow for additional customization.
• New options in result delivery rules allow for results to be delivered via fax. In addition, providers may now have fax numbers which may be used in rules, as well as locations. Reports can also be faxed directly to providers from the Results Explorer.
• Support for PDF patient reports has been integrated into both Harvest Webstation and the Harvest Email Module. PDF reports look identical to the final reports generated by a Harvest LIS workstation, so now web users and email recipients can get the same style of report that you generate in the laboratory.
• System security can be configured to lock user accounts after a specified number of unsuccessful sign-in attempts. In addition, more application features are now protected by security settings.