User interface reengineering. Innovative applications of bar coding in a clinical microbiology laboratory

Some clinical laboratory departments (such as microbiology) provide extensive reporting of text and other data not generated by instruments that can be interfaced to a laboratory information system. These data are usually entered into the laboratory information system manually by keyboard data entry, which can be cumbersome and time consuming. Bar codes, which are already used in laboratories to facilitate rapid entry of sample-identifying information, have the potential to be used much more broadly as a generalizable data entry technique. We developed a comprehensive system that takes advantage of several applications of bar coding to facilitate the work of our Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Central to our system is the use of bar code "scripts" to meet many of our complex data entry requirements. Use of these scripts is transparent to the laboratory information system (ie, no special "drivers" are needed) because data are received as if they had been generated by typing the characters on the keyboard. The scripts consist of bar codes that encode the series of keystrokes needed to give the appropriate response at the series of prompts offered by the laboratory information system. Both alphanumeric and other keys, including carriage returns and special characters, can be converted into bar codes and incorporated into scripts. By creating and printing these scripts in the laboratory using standard wordprocessing software and bar code fonts for personal computers, laboratorians without specialized computer training have the tools to substantially improve the data entry efficiency of existing data entry terminals for a variety of laboratory information systems.