SILAM: Integrating Laboratory Information System within the Liguria Region Electronic Health Record

In the last few years a significant challenge has been faced in the healthcare world, after the development of the LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names And Codes) and the HL7 (Health level 7) standards; in order to provide systems of interoperable platforms, interconnected and utilizing standard language for the processing, communication and treatment of data. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a small local laboratory can easily communicate with a central data repository using these standards. This was realized by creating: a database with laboratory observations codified in LOINC, a web server that represents the general repository of data and by using two clients that directly link to the Web Service (WS) and which also allows clinicians and laboratory biologists to communicate with each other. The results clearly demonstrate that these standards are able to realize interoperability among heterogeneous systems. A future development should consist in testing this reality at a national level, with a national data repository.