Tracing Job and Sample Ownership

Overview

Chain of custody (COC) is a concept, mainly in commercial laboratories, that keeps track of, and is able to verify the primary processing events that happens to, jobs. It starts with the COC being passed from the client, possibly through a delivery agent, to the laboratory. It is the tracking of the initial receipt of the samples and their receipt conditions in which custodianship is passed to the laboratory. Effectively, as the laboratory staff sign for the samples from the delivery agent, they become responsible for the handling of the samples.

It is not uncommon for the initial paperwork from the client to be scanned so that it is saved as an electronic record of the COC details, as delivered. The COC might simply be the paperwork trail of the handling and processing of the samples, but could also cover the full electronic tracking of who handled and processed the samples until they are reported. You could imagine that this COC could be called for to be provided, if there is an dispute or questioning of the handling of the client's samples.

Some laboratories issue an initial COC receipt back to the client, listing the job details, sample lists and the tests to be performed, so that the client can confirm that there are no details missing before the laboratory proceeds with their tasks.

Where the samples are intrinsically valuable (for example, gold or precious metals), then this concept of the COC can also include tracking who (and when) has custodianship of the samples at any time, and even could request that the weight of the samples be tracked between changes of custodians.

Process

Job Ownership

The ownership of a job does not allow or restrict any particular function, however, it can be useful to tag a user as being responsible for a particular job.

When an attempt is made to change the owner of a job, if the JOB_OWNER_USERGROUP application preference is:

  • Not defined, then any active user can be selected as the job's owner.

  • Defined and contains a valid user group, then only users who are a member of the user group can be selected as the job's owner.

  • Defined and contains an invalid user group, then the owner cannot be changed.

Upon Changing Job Ownership

Upon changing job ownership:

Change the owner of a job

Sample Ownership

The ownership of a sample does not allow or restrict any particular function, however, it can be useful to tag a user as being responsible for a particular sample.

When an attempt is made to change the owner of a job, if the SAMPLE_OWNER_USERGROUP application preference is:

  • Not defined, then any active user can be selected as the sample's owner.

  • Defined and contains a valid user group, then only users who are a member of the user group can be selected as the sample's owner.

  • Defined and contains an invalid user group, then the owner cannot be changed.

Upon Changing Sample Ownership

Upon changing sample ownership:

Change the owner of a sample