Orchard Software in Indiana offers Orchard Harvest LIMS, a laboratory information management system dedicated to providing operational support and streamlining with rules-based decisioning, data analytics and business intelligence, and clear interfaces.
We were looking into changing to another LIS but they failed to get things done and we ended up staying with Orchard. We are now in the process of moving everything to Sequoia since we have grown so much as a lab. I don't have any other experience with another LIS to compare to.
Harvest is well suited in a lab or a reference lab of about any size. You can customize the workflow with filters and permissions to ensure that the right people have the right abilities when they need them. I would say that it is not as great for locations that have multiple remote locations without great internet. Because of the underlying technologies, latency between client and server can cause havoc.
User Interface - The software is like 25 years old, and it feels like it. They have added some buttons and links to try to make it easier, but it's not as flashy as the SaaS applications that are being built these days. It feels like there isn't a lot of time spent on refining the features, just adding more to it.
Archaic Architecture - The application use 4D for the database. This means that you can't use SQL for queries, latency is a huge issue and there isn't a hosted option. You have to have your own in-house server to run the server application.
Client is an Application - We have workstations dedicated to managing the interfaces. These workstations have to run the application as a program and can not run them as a service. This means that if you want to apply Windows updates it required manually closing and re-launching the application.
Data Mining - There are some basic reports, but they do not really allow you to build complex reports about the patients or work being performed.
We were looking into changing to another LIS but they failed to get things done and we ended up staying with Orchard. We are now in the process of moving everything to Sequoia since we have grown so much as a lab. I don't have any other experience with another LIS to compare to.
The support provided by Orchard Software for Harvest allows me to not have to worry as much about the system. I can grant them access to my system and trust them to work on the issue while I work on other issues.
The automation saves a lot of time for those in the lab. There have been a few times that the lab has been down for a couple of hours and having to catch up and enter the results from the instruments manually can take the rest of the day.
