New technology set to improve quality and performance of COVID-19 testing
he Couchiching COVID-19 Assessment Centre at OSMH (Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital) is proud to announce it has successfully gone live today with handheld devices for the creation of digitized COVID-19 Lab requisitions, as part of the Province’s Lab Automation project. It is an important step forward in improving the quality and performance of end-to-end testing for patients, care providers and labs.
Working with Ontario Health, OSMH has partnered to introduce handheld technology and barcoded labels for all COVID-19 tests performed at the Assessment Centre. Staff are excited to have the new technology deployed as they can now collect a patient’s information by scanning their health card and driver’s license, capturing everything needed for a digital lab requisition.
“As the demand for testing increases, this new technology enables us to increase our capacity allowing us to complete more tests each day,” said Carmine Stumpo, OSMH President and CEO.
The Orillia Assessment Centre, which also conducts outreach testing to local Long Term Care and Retirement Homes, has completed nearly 12,000 tests since the pandemic was first declared, and earlier this week set a single day high with 300 tests completed.
The benefits of the new technology include:
- More complete and higher-quality data when capturing patient information
- Reducing manual data entry for staff by 50%, resulting in faster processing and easier matching of the requisition to the test
- More legible requisitions, making it easier for laboratory staff to process each test
OSMH is among the first Assessment Centres in Ontario to adopt the new electronic model. When coming to the Assessment Centre to be tested, bring your Ontario Health Card and driver’s license with you if you have them. You can access your testing results using your Ontario Health Card number on the provincial online portal at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/ or by calling your healthcare provider.