Challenge
A regional diagnostics lab moved 3,200+ faxes a month between their LIMS and the clinics that ordered tests. Result delivery was slow (faxes get lost, clinics call to chase), ordering was paper-based (chain-of-custody documentation re-keyed into LabWare), and customer service was inundated with status questions. New clinic onboarding took days of back-and-forth before a single test could be ordered.
Approach
A 3-week discovery surfaced the priority order: result delivery first (the painful, daily problem), then ordering, then account and billing. We designed for the clinic's workflow, not the lab's — clinics wanted one place to order, track, receive, and bill across all their providers. The portal sat in front of the LIMS rather than replacing any of its scientific workflow.
What we built
A clinic-facing portal on Astro + Laravel: ordering with structured requisitions that landed in LabWare via the LIMS API, result delivery via secure portal and HL7 routing where the clinic's EHR supported it, account management with team-based user roles, and billing with invoice access and ACH. Mirth Connect handled the HL7 integration layer to OSCAR, Epic, and Cerner; Redox handled the standardization for newer clinic systems. An AI extraction layer (with human-in-the-loop QA) parsed inbound requisition PDFs from clinics that hadn't yet switched to structured ordering.
Results
Within 12 months, the lab eliminated approximately 3,200 outbound faxes per month. Time-to-result-delivery dropped 62%. New clinic onboarding moved from days to hours (self-serve with light review). 240+ clinics have adopted the portal as their primary interface, and the lab won three new regional contracts on the strength of the customer experience.