How to Choose an LIS Vendor: The Questions That Matter

Every laboratory information system has patients, samples, results and reports on its feature list, so the feature list decides nothing. What separates them is a smaller set of questions, and the useful ones are the ones a vendor cannot answer with a slide.

What happens when the internet stops

Ask it plainly: with the connection pulled, can the front desk register a patient, take payment, and print a report? Can the bench enter results? Most cloud-only systems answer no to all of it, which is a defensible design in a hospital with redundant links and a serious problem in a laboratory where the line drops weekly. There is no right answer here, only an answer that matches your building.

Whether your actual analyzers connect

Not the brand — the model. Bring the exact make and model of every instrument you own and ask for written confirmation before you pay. An analyzer can support a protocol on paper and expose it only through an optional interface board or a vendor licence, and that discovery after purchase is expensive. Ask who writes the field and code mapping, what a future analyzer costs to add, and whether adding one needs a software release or is configuration. The analyzer protocols article covers what the protocols actually are.

Whether the reports satisfy your assessor

Reference ranges held per parameter with age and sex bands, method recorded against the test, results versioned rather than overwritten, individual user accounts, and separate collection, receipt and report timestamps. A demo report that lacks these is not a layout problem to fix later; it is a data-model problem you will not fix at all.

What it costs over three years

Month one flatters a subscription and a one-time licence roughly equally badly. Build the three-year number: licence or subscription, annual charges, implementation, per-analyzer interfacing, training, and any per-user cost as you hire. Then ask what happens at renewal if you decline an increase. The cost calculator works this through with your own volumes.

How you would leave

The most revealing question in the whole process, and the one most often skipped. Ask for an export of patients, tests and results in a readable format — ideally ask to see one during evaluation. A vendor who cannot produce it, or who treats the request as hostile, has told you something important. A system you cannot leave is expensive at any price.

Three answers that should worry you

• "We support all analyzers." No vendor does. The honest answer names your model or offers to verify it.
• "Our software is accredited." Accreditation is granted to laboratories, not products. A vendor confused about this will be confused about your evidence too.
• "Pricing depends on your requirements" — with no range, ever. Some variation is normal; total opacity usually means the number is set by what you seem able to pay.

For what it is worth, SamLab answers these the way this article suggests you demand: it is offline-first by design, its prices are published rather than quoted on request, it confirms your exact analyzer models before you commit, and its comparisons against other vendors are written to be useful rather than flattering.