Enterprise Master Specimen Index

The Enterprise Master Specimen Index (EMSI) enables the identification and tracking of specimens as unique entities across the enterprise, regardless of their point of origin. The EMSI is a critical component in the biorepository infrastructure at Partners HealthCare because specimens originate from a variety of physical locations and in a variety of systems.

The EMSI assigns a unique enterprise-wide identifier to each specimen and links it to the specimen’s identifiers from other systems. It also tracks and relates specimen derivatives across the enterprise and it manages some specimen data.

In its first release, the EMSI only handles blood and blood derivatives. In later releases, it will also handle other types of specimens.

The EMSI enables the following set of high-level functionality.

• Each specimen is assigned a unique identifier, called the EMSI ID. This identifier enables the tracking of specimens across the enterprise.
• Each Specimen is linked to several patient identifiers. These include one or several PBMD Subject IDs as well as one or several Medical Record Numbers (MRN).
• Each specimen is associated with a minimum set of specimen-specific data. Since the EMSI currently deals exclusively with blood derivatives, this data is restricted to what is applicable to blood derivatives. In later versions of the EMSI, this data set will be expanded to include items such as anatomic site, collection procedure, and other yet to be determined relevant data.
• Each specimen is linked to its parent specimens. This enables the tracking of the relationship between specimens.
• The EMSI manages specimen queries and sends them to appropriate banks that then fulfill specimen requests.

EMSI Third-Party Libraries