The nation depends on public health laboratories. They conduct tests that help detect and prevent outbreaks, mitigate the spread of disease, and screen newborns for disorders that can be deadly or devastating without swift intervention.

Despite operating in an increasingly digital world, many of these laboratories still rely on manual data entry and paper-based solutions for test ordering and resulting. These antiquated processes are not only burdensome and prone to error, but they also create critical delays in result delivery that directly impact patient outcomes. To solve this longstanding challenge, APHL—in partnership with the CDC—developed Detor. As a centralized electronic solution for test orders and results, Detor bridges the gap between public health and clinical care, ensuring that life-saving data moves at the speed of modern medicine.

Built on the AIMS Platform, this national solution facilitates data exchange by acting as an intermediary between the public health laboratory’s and healthcare organization’s existing systems. Detor is:

1. Integrated - enables communication with clinical Electronic Health Record (EHR) and laboratory’s Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) without the need for additional systems, such as a web portal

2. Indirect - all messages go through a centralized intermediary solution that negates the need for managing multiple connections

3. Flexible - allows healthcare organizations and laboratories to maintain their native and preferred formats as all transformation and translation is managed by Detor

Implementing Detor allows public health laboratories and healthcare organizations to plug into existing infrastructure and take advantage of shared resources, expertise, and technology across the public health landscape. 

Open Updated as of Jan 27, 2026

What impact has Detor made? Faster, more accurate, more efficient test orders and results. Detor has already demonstrated success nationwide. Since going live in August 2024, six state public health laboratories and 36 healthcare facilities have gone into production, exchanging more than 100,000 test orders and results. This has led to significant improvements in data exchange efficiency, turnaround time, and data quality improvements. Result Availability Improvement: 42%, or an average of 4.5 days faster Data Entry Time Saved at Public Health Laboratory: 80%, or an average of 11+ minutes saved per test Data Entry Time Saved at Healthcare Organization: 90%, or an average of 10+ minutes saved per test See full Detor Status Dashboard here.

Why do faster test results matter? Patient care, operational efficiencies, and public health response In healthcare, the speed of a test result is often just as important as the accuracy of the result itself. It impacts the patient’s care; it impacts healthcare’s operational efficiencies; and from a public health perspective, it acts as the primary tool to fight the spread of disease.  Time is the most critical variable in Newborn Screening In the case of newborn screening, faster results equate to lives saved. Time is the most critical variable. For many of the conditions screened, the time between birth and the onset of irreversible damage is only a few days. When test results are available faster, a simple nutrition change can shift a baby’s trajectory from chronic disability or early death to one of normal growth and development.  99.9% of the 3.6 million babies born in the Unites States each year receive newborn screening at a Public Health Laboratory. Of those 3.6 million babies, approximately 12,500 of them receive a positive result that if not detected and treated early can lead to a potentially serious or fatal condition. Thanks to immediate intervention, thousands of babies a year do NOT develop lifelong intellectual disabilities and developmental delays, deafness, blindness, neurological damage, seizures, chronic illnesses, sudden death. In recognition of Detor’s impact, APHL was awarded the Amazon Web Services IMAGINE Grant for Children’s Health Innovation in October 2024.

Open Six Days Faster: Bridging the 3,000-Mile Gap in Alaskan Newborn Screening Detor has replaced a lengthy and highly manual newborn screening process between Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in Alaska and the State Hygienic Laboratory of Iowa. Today, Detor automates the flow of data and delivers critical results six days faster. This digital transformation ensures that newborns in even the most remote areas of Alaska receive the immediate interventions they need during their most vulnerable time. Read the full story here.

Open Preparedness: How Detor is Laying the Foundation The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a critical vulnerability in our nation's health infrastructure. While public health laboratories performed at peak capacity, manual data entry became a primary bottleneck to timely intervention. Detor was developed to ensure this never happens again. With its first clinical testing launch in New Hampshire, Detor has built the foundation that will ensure this nation is never again slowed down by paper in a time of crisis. Read the full story here.

Without a centralized solution like Detor, public health laboratories and their healthcare partners would be left to develop their own solutions.

For many, losing Detor means a return to an unsustainable administrative burden. A dependence on manual processes introduces delays, reduces accuracy, decreases efficiency, and eliminates the ability to scale if a new outbreak occurs. For those with the technical acumen, “point-to-point” interfaces could be established and maintained between the public health laboratory and a hospital system. While some have done this, this approach requires numerous connections, a substantial time commitment, and a high setup and maintenance cost. Most public health laboratories and healthcare organizations simply don’t have the funds or the manpower to do this. Detor’s greatest value is its "build once, use many" architecture. Losing it would fragment the national system.

The most tragic consequence will be the negative impact on health outcomes. For a baby born with a metabolic disorder, a six-day delay can be the difference between a routine treatment and permanent organ damage. For clinical testing such as flu, tuberculosis, and sexually transmitted infections, it can be the difference between containment and outbreak. And in terms of the next pandemic, it could be the difference between a catastrophe prevented and lives lost.