Case Study: Costa Rica's ASTA achieves faster neonatal screening—cuts turnaround from 72 to 28 hours with STARLIMS

Asta’s Neonatal Blood Screening Program Deploys Starlims Public Health Solution

ASTA, the Costa Rican Association for the Screening and Prevention of Childhood Disabilities, runs the country's neonatal blood screening program (about 1,500 tests per week) and needed a robust laboratory information management solution to replace its legacy system, ensure traceability, automate alerts and second‑sample scheduling, and improve communication between departments. To meet these specialist neonatal screening requirements ASTA deployed STARLIMS (STARLIMS Public Health Solution / LIMS).

STARLIMS was configured to integrate with instruments, provide barcoding, automated scheduling and real‑time alerts, and centralize demographic, results and communications data. As a result STARLIMS cut turnaround time from an average of 72 hours to 28 hours, delivered a reported 95% increase in laboratory efficiency, eliminated sample tracking errors (100% reduction), reduced image digitization from 30 days to 1 day, and removed manual result entry through instrument interfaces.

ASTA