To meet this need, providers must obtain POC systems from several vendors. There's no commonality across implementations. Perry is vice president of a consortium formed late last year to address this problem. Lack of a POC connectivity standard has consequences for everyone involved, from frontline users to laboratory professionals to vendors. Users, primarily nurses, find themselves confronted with a bewildering and ever-changing array of devices, procedures, processes, and requirements.
Vendors find a POC market that remains stubbornly fragmented and unnecessarily slow growing.
Laboratory professionals find themselves responsible for data that are hard to manage from a connectivity and a quality control standpoint, and, to add insult to injury, managing the data requires lots of costly labor. A preponderance of their time is associated with POC data capture, review, and assessment, with ensuring the quality of the testing that is done at the point of care. The problem is not new, and with the growing popularity of POC testing, it has steadily worsened over the last decade. Not surprisingly, the issue has become a high priority for professional associations serving clinical laboratories. Not long ago, Petrie Rainey, MD, PhD, then chair of the fast-growing POC division of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry, asked his members to identify their main concerns.