ArticleAfrican journal of laboratory medicine2020
Timely delivery of laboratory efficiency information, Part I: Developing an interactive turnaround time dashboard at a high-volume laboratory.
Article in African journal of laboratory medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Development, Implementation, and Evaluation Methods for Dashboards in Health Care: Scoping Review.JMIR medical informatics · 2024Article
- Appropriateness of laboratory expenditure for primary health care facilities across South Africa.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2023Article
- Modelling CD4 reagent usage across a national hierarchal network of laboratories in South Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2023Article
- Newly implemented community CD4 service in Tshwaragano, Northern Cape province, South Africa, positively impacts result turn-around time.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2022Article
- Pandemic Response in the Clinical Laboratory: The Utility of Interactive Dashboards.Journal of pathology informatics · 2022Article
- In-depth investigation of turn-around time of full blood count tests requested from a clinical haematology outpatient department in Cape Town, South Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2021Article
- Weekly laboratory turn-around time identifies poor performance masked by aggregated reporting.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2020Article
- Connected diagnostics systems: The future of disease control in Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMean turn-around time (TAT) reporting for testing laboratories in a national network is typically static and not immediately available for meaningful corrective action and does not allow for test-by-test or site-by-site interrogation of individual laboratory performance.
objectiveThe aim of this study was to develop an easy-to-use, visual dashboard to report interactive graphical TAT data to provide a weekly snapshot of TAT efficiency.
methodsAn interactive dashboard was developed by staff from the National Priority Programme and Central Data Warehouse of the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa, during 2018. Steps required to develop the dashboard were summarised in a flowchart. To illustrate the dashboard, one week of data from a busy laboratory for a specific set of tests was analysed using annual performance plan TAT cut-offs. Data were extracted and prepared to deliver an aggregate extract, with statistical measures provided, including test volumes, global percentage of tests that were within TAT cut-offs and percentile statistics.
resultsNine steps were used to develop the dashboard iteratively with continuous feedback for each step. The data warehouse environment conformed and stored laboratory information system data in two formats: (1) fact and (2) dimension. Queries were developed to generate an aggregate TAT data extract to create the dashboard. The dashboard successfully delivered weekly TAT reports.
conclusionImplementation of a TAT dashboard can successfully enable the delivery of near real-time information and provide a weekly snapshot of efficiency in the form of TAT performance to identify and quantitate bottlenecks in service delivery.
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