Custody.
Proof, not paperwork.
A tube on a kitchen table is not clinical data. What makes it clinical is an unbroken record (that this sample came from this identified person, was collected correctly at a known time, and reached the laboratory in a known condition, without interruption). That record is what a laboratory releases a result against.
An unbroken record
of every hand-off.
Where a sample went, through whose hands, in what condition, and when it arrived. Collection moved out of the building, and the thing that did not move with it was the evidence (so the sample arrived at the bench with a story nobody could check). Custody is that evidence, assembled as the sample travels rather than reconstructed afterwards.
A record with a gap in it is not a record. Where a third party moves the sample, the chain says so rather than pretending otherwise. An honest gap a laboratory can see and reason about is worth more than a complete-looking one it cannot.
The sample moves.
The record moves with it.
Five moments, and none of them is a form somebody fills in afterwards. Each one is captured as it happens, by whoever it happens to.
Whose sample it is, fixed as it exists
The person confirms who they are as they collect, against an enrolment already made. Binding a specific human to a specific tube, unsupervised, is the problem decentralised diagnostics never solved (and everything downstream rests on it). Transit tracking is solved and anyone can buy it. This is the hard one.
Sealed, and matched to the order
The kit was on the shelf before the order existed, so its identifier belongs to the platform until the moment of activation. That is when it binds (to this order, this person, this panel) and the sample and the identity can no longer drift apart.
Every hand-off recorded as somebody’s
Not a parcel number and a shrug. Each hand-off is attributed, so a sample queried months later has a record that says who held it and when (which protects the person who handled it as much as anyone else).
Condition, where condition decides the answer
For analytes where it matters, temperature is logged along the route rather than asserted on arrival. A chain that proves where a sample went but not what happened to it has answered the easy half of the question.
Accepted with its provenance intact
The laboratory can release a result, under its own accreditation, for a sample nobody there watched being taken. Method, device, route and analyte are all on the record, so the decision to accept is made on evidence rather than on trust.
Most chains begin
after the interesting part.
A courier scan proves a box moved. It does not say who collected what was inside it, whether that person was who they claimed to be, or whether the sample was taken correctly. The gap sits exactly where the clinical question is (and it is invisible, because the part of the chain that does exist looks complete).
Both chains end at the same bench. Only one of them answers the question the bench is actually asking.
The record, as it forms.
Each hand-off lands as a row the moment it happens (who, when, in what condition) and the chain reads unbroken or it does not read at all. This is the screen a laboratory audits from.
The same record.
Four reasons to want it.
Good to know.
What is chain of custody, in this context?
An unbroken, attributed record of a sample from the moment it is collected to the moment a laboratory accessions it (where it went, through whose hands, in what condition, and when it arrived). It is what allows a laboratory to accept a sample it did not watch being taken.
How is this different from parcel tracking?
Parcel tracking proves a box moved. It says nothing about who collected what was inside it, whether that person was who they claimed to be, or whether the sample was taken correctly. Transit tracking is solved and anyone can buy it; binding a specific person to a specific tube, unsupervised, is the part that was not.
What happens when a third party moves the sample?
The chain records that it did. We do not present a hand-off we cannot attribute as though we could (an honest gap a laboratory can see and reason about is worth more than a complete-looking record it cannot check).
Is temperature always recorded?
Where the analyte makes it material. Condition is logged along the route rather than asserted on arrival, because a chain that proves where a sample went but not what happened to it has answered only the easy half of the question.
Who can see the record?
Each side sees its own view of the same record: the full evidentiary record in Pulse for the laboratory and the practice, the collector’s own hand-off in the professional role, and a status view in Flow for the patient whose sample it is.
Does custody need an integration?
Yes. It is one of the five modules that arrive with the single connection between a laboratory’s systems and ours (not as a commercial gate, but because a custody record cannot reach a bench that is not connected to it). Four modules run with nothing installed at all.
The record is the product.
Talk to us about accepting samples collected at home and at the point of care, under your own accreditation, on evidence rather than trust.