Clinical specimen receipt system using a mobile smart device

Abstract

In hospitals, with doctors’ requests, clinical specimens from patients or from persons doing health checkups are usually sent to the hospital laboratory. However, for more sophisticated tests, the specimens are sent to the reference (or commercial) laboratories. To deliver the specimens to the reference laboratories, the courier system is often utilized. The couriers pick up the specimens from clinics or hospitals, etc along with requisitions of the tests to be done, and they often pick up large numbers of specimens in a short period of time. In such situations, there may not be enough time to input the corresponding data such as patient’s name/id, type of specimen, desired tests, hospital id and courier id against each specimen and sometimes these entries are prone to clerical errors which may lead to serious consequences. To decrease these kinds of errors, we have developed a mobile photographic transmit reception system called “NEMO” which we describe in this manuscript.