Growing rapidly from a toxicology lab to a full-service referral laboratory, Luxor Scientific Medical Laboratories provides laboratory testing for hospitals, clinics, laboratories, universities, and commercial and governmental organizations across the country. In 2022, Luxor Scientific was named the third-fastest growing South Carolina company by Greenville Business Magazine.
Luxor Scientific’s growth was enabled by the implementation of Orchard Software’s laboratory information system (LIS) solutions, which give them the connectivity, workflow support, and scalability they need to continue to grow.
Luxor Scientific Grows Test Menu to Meet Patient Needs
Luxor Scientific opened in 2016 primarily as a toxicology laboratory with locations in South Carolina and Texas. In 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic started, Luxor Scientific quickly added COVID-19 testing to their menu. From there, they expanded to become a full-service laboratory, adding molecular testing in 2021 and continuing to grow their menu and expand their offerings.
Luxor Scientific now provides testing for infectious and gastrointestinal diseases, genetics and cancer, wellness, clinical drug monitoring, women’s health, allergy, anatomic pathology, and more. Currently, they manage about 3,000 samples each week for a complex variety of testing. Their testing includes several laboratory-developed tests, and their team of scientists continues to develop proprietary technology, resulting in an extensive menu of highly complex and unique diagnostic testing options. For example, they currently offer a unique, esoteric test not offered by many other labs—Epidermal Nerve Fiber Density (ENFD).
The Path to Partner with Orchard Software
As Luxor Scientific grew from a toxicology lab to COVID-19 testing and beyond, they realized that a more robust LIS was necessary to handle molecular testing and create the customized reports they required. Being familiar with Orchard Software’s reputation, they selected Orchard Software as their LIS partner largely based on the functionality and customization available in Orchard® Molecular™ that they couldn’t find from other vendors.
Orchard Molecular was implemented in September 2021, and Orchard® Enterprise Lab™ was added in May 2022. Luxor Scientific also worked alongside Orchard Software as an Orchard® Enterprise Lab™ Toxicology module early adopter.
Workflow Benefits
The flexibility and customization of Orchard’s molecular solution has been one of the biggest benefits to Luxor Scientific. Lindsey Contella, Director of Strategic Laboratory Development at Luxor Scientific, appreciates that the molecular solution allows them to monitor where samples are throughout the testing process.
Luxor Scientific has realized the following key benefits after implementing Orchard solutions in their laboratories:
Customized Order Entry
The laboratory can customize order entry screens by clinic, by location, and by specific workflow. Their customers appreciate having an individualized order entry setup, thanks to the flexible capabilities of Orchard’s LIS solutions.
This level of configurability is particularly helpful because Luxor Scientific has multiple workflows. For example, they have two different registration workflows. For toxicology samples, they use a quick registration that captures the minimum information needed so samples can be processed quickly. However, in the core lab they use a full registration. They have customized order entry screens to make certain fields required depending on which registration process is needed. This specialized setup, combined with rules that trigger pop-up reminders, helps make their registration process faster and easier.
Specialized Reports
Luxor Scientific worked closely with Orchard to customize their reports so that they are easy to read and interpret. For example, different colors and color schemes are used to highlight areas that need attention.
Data Storage & Mining
For both toxicology and molecular workflows, Orchard’s enterprise solutions allow technologists to easily view where samples are in the process and to store information that is amassed for testing purposes but is not necessarily part of the results. For toxicology tests, Luxor Scientific may run many different tests on each patient. That information needs to be stored, but not all of it is necessary for the report. When they need to analyze that stored data for trends or other information, all of the data is available within their LIS.
Luxor Scientific tracks internal metrics—such as pending results, turnaround times, and time to release to each clinic—that are then attached to a Power BI report. This is accomplished with Orchard’s data mining tools, which quickly give them access to the data they need.
“We use Orchard’s data browser queries to pull reports and quickly look at our turnaround times or what’s pending or past due, and that has been a great benefit.” ~Lindsey Contella, Director of Strategic Laboratory Development
Customized Buttons Specific for Luxor Scientific Workflow
Luxor Scientific has taken Orchard’s solution configurability and made changes to support their specific workflow and patient needs. For example, they created two customized buttons on their registration screen.
- The Missing Lab Information button is selected when a sample is received without all the required information. When that button is selected, the system adds the sample to a log for follow-up.
- The Question button is also available so that when staff members have a question, the system automatically sends an e-mail to the correct person so they can get an answer quickly.
Luxor Scientific & Orchard Working Toward Future Goals
Luxor Scientific and Orchard Software worked collaboratively to fine-tune Orchard’s toxicology module; Luxor Scientific was an invaluable early adopter.
With the molecular and toxicology solutions configured as they need, Luxor Scientific intends to continue to grow its laboratory test offerings by expanding into functional medicine and increasing testing for liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS), including panels for hormones, vitamins, and biomarkers. In tandem with this growth, they will continue to optimize their Orchard LIS solutions, and plan to add auto-verification of normal results to speed result delivery. They also plan to add a cost field to the order choice to enhance the information available in their compendium.
“We definitely had our challenges as a first adopter, but we are grateful for all the help that we had, for Orchard listening to all of our feedback and suggestions for changes and getting us to a product that we’re happy with.” ~Lindsey Contella, Director of Strategic Laboratory Development