As laboratory testing becomes increasingly specialized, health systems and reference labs face a common challenge: how to efficiently exchange complex clinical data while maintaining a seamless provider experience.
Epic Aura represents a significant step forward in addressing that challenge. By creating a standardized framework for external laboratory connectivity, Aura enables organizations to exchange orders and results more effectively across the Epic ecosystem. For labs supporting advanced molecular and genomic testing, Aura has the potential to do more than simplify interfaces. It provides a foundation for scaling some of the most complex testing workflows in healthcare today.
While Aura is already changing how organizations approach external laboratory integrations, its long-term value lies in how it complements the broader evolution of Beaker, Genomics, and patient care within Epic.
Why Aura Matters
Historically, connecting healthcare organizations to external laboratories has required custom interfaces, unique workflows, and significant ongoing maintenance. As testing volumes grow and outreach programs expand, these one-off integrations become increasingly difficult to support.
Aura addresses these challenges by providing a standardized framework for connectivity across Epic organizations. Unlike traditional reference lab integrations that are built and maintained individually, Aura enables organizations to participate in a shared network designed to simplify onboarding and improve scalability.
For performing laboratories, Aura can help:
- Accelerate onboarding of new client organizations
- Reduce variability across client implementations
- Support growth without a proportional increase in interface maintenance
- Standardize workflows and result delivery across participating organizations
For ordering organizations, Aura can help:
- Reduce the effort required to connect to external laboratory partners
- Leverage established integration patterns instead of building custom workflows
- Gain access to specialized testing services more efficiently
- Improve consistency in ordering and result consumption experiences
Beyond simplifying connectivity, Aura creates a foundation for clinical programs that have historically been difficult to scale through traditional reference lab models, particularly in molecular diagnostics, genomics, and precision medicine.
How Aura Differs from Traditional Reference Lab Integrations
For many Beaker teams, the natural comparison point for Aura is the traditional reference lab interface. While both support the exchange of orders and results, the implementation approach is fundamentally different.
Traditional reference lab integrations often require:
- Custom interface development between organizations
- Separate mapping and configuration for each laboratory relationship
- Limited standardization across implementations
- Increased maintenance as testing menus and workflows evolve
Aura takes a different approach. Rather than functioning as a series of individual point-to-point interfaces, Aura acts as a standardized network for exchanging orders and results across Epic organizations. In many ways, it serves as an order and result aggregator, allowing participating organizations to leverage common integration patterns rather than building each connection independently.
Once a performing laboratory is connected to the Aura network, ordering organizations can leverage that connection through Aura rather than building and maintaining separate interfaces to the laboratory. Epic further supports this model through Turbocharger packages and Build Wizards, which provide guided configuration and established implementation patterns that accelerate deployment and promote consistency.
This approach helps:
- Reduce variability across external laboratory connections
- Accelerate onboarding of new tests, laboratories, and client sites
- Allow organizations to benefit from established implementation patterns
- Support growth without a proportional increase in interface maintenance
Most importantly, Aura provides a stronger foundation for genomic and precision medicine workflows. As organizations exchange increasingly complex data, including discrete genomic results and pharmacogenomic information, a standardized framework becomes critical for maintaining consistency across the Epic ecosystem.
Moving beyond one-off integrations allows laboratories and health systems to focus less on interface maintenance and more on how clinical data can be leveraged to improve patient care.
Supporting the Next Generation of Genomic Testing
Unlike traditional laboratory results, genomic testing often involves highly complex data structures. Different performing laboratories may use different methodologies, report variants differently, or interpret findings using evolving clinical evidence. As a result, standardization across organizations remains challenging.
Ordering organizations participating in Aura networks are increasingly being asked to support:
- Molecular diagnostics
- Pharmacogenomic testing
- Cancer genomics
- Hereditary disease screening
- Variant and genomic data reporting
Successfully supporting these workflows requires close alignment between Beaker, Genomics, Orders, and downstream clinical systems. Aura provides a framework for integrating these areas while helping organizations prepare for future advances in precision medicine.
As genomic testing becomes more widely adopted, laboratories need integration strategies that can accommodate both current workflows and future innovation. Aura helps provide that foundation.
Testing and Go-Live
Testing an Aura implementation is about more than confirming that messages move between systems. Organizations must validate that workflows function as expected and that orders and results are exchanged accurately across participating environments.
Common testing priorities for a standard reference lab interface include:
- End-to-end workflow validation
- Order and result exchange testing
- Cross-organizational process verification
- Round-trip order and result validation
Unlike traditional reference lab implementations, Aura’s standardized deployment model helps reduce variability across environments. By leveraging common implementation patterns through Turbochargers and Build Wizards, organizations can spend less time validating custom build details and more time validating real-world workflows.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Beaker and Genomics
Genomic testing continues to evolve rapidly, and Epic is investing heavily in capabilities that move beyond simply storing genetic results. Organizations are beginning to leverage genomic data across the patient’s entire clinical journey, creating new opportunities for decision support, personalized treatment plans, and longitudinal patient management.
Emerging capabilities are increasingly focused on:
- Longitudinal genomic data management
- Advanced variant interpretation workflows
- Clinical decision support driven by genomic findings
- Re-evaluation of previously reported variants as scientific knowledge evolves
- Enhanced genomics reporting and visualization tools
For Beaker organizations, this represents a meaningful shift. Historically, many labs have relied on third-party systems to manage complex genomic workflows, with only a subset of data ultimately reaching the patient chart. As Epic continues to expand its genomics capabilities, more of those workflows may be managed directly within the Epic ecosystem.
The ability to maintain, reinterpret, and act on genomic data over time has the potential to change how laboratories support patient care. As testing becomes more sophisticated, the value of an integration framework capable of supporting rich and evolving genomic data will only continue to grow.
Epic Aura represents an important shift toward a more standardized and scalable approach to laboratory integration.
At Honeydew Consulting, we’ve seen growing interest in Aura, Epic Genomics, and precision medicine initiatives across the industry. As organizations look to exchange richer clinical data and support increasingly sophisticated testing programs, the need for thoughtful implementation strategies continues to grow.
With deep experience across Beaker, Genomics, and laboratory integrations, our team is well positioned to help organizations navigate these evolving technologies and build solutions that are ready for what’s next.
If you have questions related to Aura, please reach out and we would be happy to discuss it with you!