Product Launch: Dendi Instrument Connector™ – Lab Instrument Integrations Solution

Dendi Instrument Connector: The Missing Link for Clinical Lab Success

Dendi is proud to announce the launch of its latest lab instrument integrations product, the Dendi Instrument Connector™. The Instrument Connector™ is a system-agnostic solution for lab instrument integrations. It is designed to help automate diagnostics lab workflows by connecting high-throughput instruments to any consumers of results data – including LIS/LIMS, ELNs, middleware, and analytics software. 

Connected instruments can streamline operations by eliminating repetitive manual data entry, reducing errors, and staff fatigue. Over time, this dramatically decreases operating expenses for the lab. 

 

The Problem

All laboratories face the challenge of getting data to and from diagnostic instruments. The reality is that these instruments were never designed for easy data transmission especially considering some hematology and chemistry analyzers are decades old. Instrument manufacturers may bundle proprietary middleware designed to work only with their instruments and systems, but labs are rarely only running on one machine. The lack of data exchange standards between different manufacturers for hardware drivers, data formats, and even physical data cables greatly complicates the process of transmitting data between multiple instruments to various systems. 

This makes lab instrument integrations into a lab’s workflow cumbersome and time-consuming even for integrations vendors who have been in the business for decades. It’s not uncommon to experience months of downtime. Often the interfaces don’t work as intended leading to support issues and headaches for all parties involved (LIS/LIMS vendors, instrument manufacturers, and interfacing vendors) resulting in a finger-pointing match where the ultimate loser is the lab.

The costs are often exorbitant as well, especially for smaller labs that can’t afford the enterprise interfacing solutions that are primarily offered to hospitals. Historically, independent labs were often unable to capture significant value from lab automation (Selecting automation for the clinical chemistry laboratory. Melanson, 2007). 

As a result, many labs forgo interfacing altogether and choose a very labor-intensive approach: manually entering data into the machines, printing results onto paper, manually entering data into spreadsheets for calculations, followed by even more painstaking, error-prone manual data entry.

Additionally, with the healthcare industry rapidly moving towards a more tech-forward and cloud-enabled future, aging offline lab instruments and on-prem systems are keeping labs from modernizing.

The Solution

The Dendi Instrument Connector™ provides a simple, reliable, and cost-effective solution to lab instrument interfaces enabling seamless and automated data exchange. It’s compatible with all major LIS platforms and can interface with a wide range of laboratory instruments from different manufacturers.  Dendi’s proprietary connector utilizes instrument interface drivers developed in-house to receive data from instruments. The device parses the data into an appropriate format for systems to consume over a network/cloud architecture. Once set up, it can easily monitor and maintain instrument interfaces in critical situations such as power failures to get the lab back online quickly.

Ultimately, the Instrument Connector™ enables labs to operate more efficiently and accomplish more with their diagnostics data.