Background to the Laboratory Testing Database

A laboratory in Oxford, UK, runs a service that receives patient blood samples for testing for the presence of a certain illness. The laboratory operates under GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) and is therefore audited frequently.

All aspects of the blood sample delivery and test requested by the clinician or hospital are logged. Subsequently the sample is placed on a 96-well plate and the test is run. The raw results so produced are documented then analysed to produce a Test Result, which is the final piece of information that the clinician or hospital anticipates.

Features

An important aspect of this database is the requirement for GLP and consequent auditing.  Therefore the database has several levels of security for data protection, in addition to a full audit trail, that tracks user actions such as editing records.

For full confidentiality of patient records, the patients are recorded in the database as identifiers.  No names or contact details are used, except for those of the contact requesting the service.  Information on the blood samples, such as the date/time sent, date/time of receipt, courier, condition on arrival, etc. are stored in the database.  To run the test in the laboratory, the samples are allocated to positions on a 96-well plate, thus the database reflects this procedure: it has a graphical 96-well plate plus a list of samples from which the user selects those to be allocated to the plate.  Finally, once the samples are on the plate, the database calculates the Test Result from the raw results.

This database has two main modules: samples and plates with results.  An additional database module serves as a contacts organiser, which, in the current context, contains hospital, clinician and consultant contact details.

Additionally, the database has special screens for:

• data import  
• data export  
• archiving records  
• searching    
• reports    
• security    
• system functions  

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