Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care has rolled out a software system that digitizes pathology orders, allowing the health system to generate faster results.
The system, Epic's Beaker Anatomic Pathology, helps track the collection and examination of tissues and fluids at the cellular level by pathologists. The system streamlines and automates reporting of data to the Stanford Cancer Institute Research Database, monitors location and identity of tissue samples, and simplifies communication between treating physicians, pathologists and patients, according to a Dec. 2 press release from Stanford.
Beaker AP, which went live at Stanford on Nov. 6, also tags pathology orders using a barcode that is linked to the patient so that physicians can send orders directly to pathology via its Epic software environment.
Before this software, Stanford physicians would have to manually enter the orders into a software system.
"Beaker AP improves patient safety because after collection, the status and location of samples are immediately visible and trackable as the sample goes through its many stops in a complex organization like Stanford Health Care," said Ann Folkins, MD, an associate professor of pathology who helped lead the project to install the system.