Middleware that reads a haematology analyser

Middleware that sits between a haematology analyser and laboratory software, listens for the analyser's output over its serial or network interface, parses it, and files the results against the right sample. It removes the step where a technician reads twenty numbers off a printed slip and types them into a report, which is both the slowest part of the workflow and the one that produces transcription errors.

The problem

A three-part differential CBC carries around twenty parameters. At eighty patients a day that is roughly sixteen hundred keystrokes of pure transcription, and every one of them is a chance to type a 7 as a 1. The analyser already knew the answer; the information was being retyped because nothing was listening.

What we built

1. 01

   Speak the analyser's own dialect, ASTM E1394 over serial, bridged to the network where the machine has no Ethernet port.

2. 02

   Parse the record structure rather than scrape the print stream, so results map to parameters reliably.

3. 03

   Match each result set to the sample it belongs to, so a report cannot be filed against the wrong patient.

4. 04

   Buffer locally when the destination is unreachable, so a network blip does not lose a run.

5. 05

   Keep the middleware a separate process, so an analyser problem never takes the laboratory software down with it.

What it does now

• Results reach the report without being retyped.
• Transcription as a source of error is removed from the CBC workflow.
• An older serial-only analyser participates in a networked system.