Lab Service

Introduction

The Oystehr Lab Service provides an interface to send lab orders to external labs. For example, you can use the Lab Service to send an order for a blood test to Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp. The lab service has endpoints for querying orderable items from lab compendia and submitting orders to external labs. When results are reported by a lab, the Lab Service automatically writes those results to the FHIR store.

Explore the additional pages in this section for more information on establishing relationships with labs, exploring a lab's offering (compendium), submitting an order, and retrieving results.

Core Terminology

Let's take a moment to review at a high level some of the concepts you will see throughout the Lab Service documentation:

• Orderable Item: An orderable item is an individual test offered by a lab, for example a strep test or a Complete Blood Count (CBC) test. Orderable items describe the test being ordered including the identifying code, any sample information including collection instructions, Answer on Entry (AOE) questions, and more. Orderable items are uniquely identified by the combination of the lab, the compendium version, and the orderable item code. See the example orderable item for more information

• Compendium: A compendium is the list of all orderable items that a lab offers. Compendia can have as few as one or potentially hundreds of orderable items. A compendium is defined by its lab and its version. A lab may update its compendium from time to time to include new tests or remove old tests, or make changes to preexisting tests. When labs update their compendia, the Oystehr Lab Service automatically picks up the changes and publishes a new version so you can easily stay up to date.

• Route: Routes represent that a provider or office has an account with a lab. A Route is required in order to submit orders to a lab. Read more about routes in the Onboarding section.

• Order: Orders represent requests for service from a lab. An order, which is represented by a series of FHIR resources, contains all of the necessary information for a lab to perform the test and bill the appropriate party. This includes details about the orderable item, Patient, insurance, and more. See Submit an Order for more details.

• Results: After a lab receives an order and sample and performs the necessary test, results are transmitted and received automatically by the Lab Service. Read more about results on the Results page.

Sandbox Mode

Sandbox mode allows developers to build and test configuring routes to labs, exploring a lab's compendium, and even submitting orders to specific labs, all without worrying about triggering orders in the real world. Data in the sandbox may not reflect a lab's current compendium offering but will nevertheless provide a representative example of the types and shapes of orderable items one might expect to submit.

🚧  Beta Access

The Oystehr Lab Service is currently available for use exclusively in sandbox mode while the service is in beta. We are actively refining the service, and we look forward to bringing you improved features in the near future.