Implementation of a Virtual Private Network-Based Laboratory Information System Serving a Rural Area in Turkey

Abstract

FeatureI n many developing countries, including Turkey, many factors hinder access to quality and affordable health care for people who live in rural areas. 1 These factors include severe geographic and weather conditions, a shortage of doctors and other health care professionals, distance between patients and health facilities, and long turnaround times (TAT) for completing and reporting laboratory results. Consequently, patients who live in rural areas mostly prefer to visit the primary hospitals, even if they live far from them and they have to pay for a tiring and expensive trip. Furthermore, this increases the work load of the primary hospitals. For countries with limited medical expertise and resources, a meaningful and economical integration of communications, information, and medical technologies will reduce the problems no matter where the patient lives. Telemedicine offers the potential to address these concerns and to save the patient extra costs that are associated with treatment, such as travel and other living expenses. 1 There are many telemedicine applications, such as teleradiology, telecardiology, telepathology, mental health, electronic medical records, and laboratory information systems (LIS).Clinical laboratories play a crucial role (70%) in clinical decisions (admittance, discharge, diagnosis, and therapy), and measures taken to counteract economic problems are directed towards consolidating laboratories, and developing a network among hospitals, territories, and centralized laboratories. 2 As a limited number of advanced laboratories are available at central hospitals or central laboratories in big cities, designing a Virtual Private Network (VPN)-based LIS becomes urgent. In such telemedicine applications, blood specimens from patients are sent to those laboratories for analysis. The results are stored in a single database and become electronically available for all health institutions within the network. Based on the stored data, many applications (such as decision support models, care management, automated remainders, and alerts for selection of dosing of medication) can be developed.In this study, we describe a VPN-based LIS to serve remote-entry test orders and to access the results of clinical analyzers, with the aim of significantly reducing TATs for laboratory services in rural areas. The system was implemented for clinical laboratory services [such as managing ELISAs, complete blood counts (CBCs), and biochemistry tests] that were ordered from 13 different primary health care units in Gumushane's rural areas in Turkey. With this implementation, 2 laboratories in this region-Gumushane Center Laboratory (GCL) and Kelkit Center Laboratory (KCL)-were converted to rapid response laboratories. Currently, the results of blood specimens are reported to primary health care units that have significantly reduced TATs.

Analysis of Socket Communication Technology Based on Machine Learning Algorithms Under TCP/IP Protocol in Network Virtual Laboratory System

“…With the continuous progress and iteration of computer technology, the virtual laboratory system relying on computer network has become a new trend and development direction of computer network application [1], [2]. Virtual laboratory system is mainly used to simulate and describe a scientific research environment close to the real situation.…”