Specimen availability

Availability refers to whether or not a specimen exists at a laboratory.

A specimen’s physical availability may change for a variety of reasons. For example, if a primary specimen was processed into aliquots, the primary specimen no longer exists and is thus not available. Likewise, if an aliquot’s tube was damaged and its contents could not be recovered, it is also not available.

If a specimen is available, it can be added to a shipment and it can be assigned a storage location. If it is not available, LDMS will prevent you from shipping or storing the specimen.

Availability is a property of both primary specimens and aliquot specimens. By default, new specimens are available until you change them to unavailable or a specific condition automatically changes them.

There are several times where LDMS will automatically modify a specimen’s availability. There are other places where you can manually change availability.

• You can manually change the availability of both primary and aliquot specimens, unless the specimen has been shipped.
• Specimens will automatically become unavailable if they are shipped.
• If a specimen’s volume changes to zero, it is automatically made unavailable.
• A primary specimen will automatically become unavailable after aliquots have been derived from it, and you cannot change it back to available unless the aliquots are deleted.
• Certain condition codes, such as DSR (destroyed) will automatically change a specimen to unavailable.