Storing Dried Blood Spot Cards

Figuring out how to define your storage is not always obvious. Certain specimens doesn't easily fit into a box with rows and columns. These types of scenarios may require some creativity to store things efficiently.

One such scenario is storing dried blood spots (DBS) cards that have multiple blood specimens on them. Each blood spot may have its own, unique global specimen ID in LDMS, thus a single DBS card isn't really a single specimen that can be placed into a box. Putting the cards into, for example, a 1x20 container would not be correct since it doesn't account for the individual spots on the card.

One way to solve this is to treat the spots on the card as columns in a storage container. Each row in the container would be one card, and each spot would be a column. The following image shows how this would be done with a DBS card with 4 specimens on it.

Figure: Dried blood spot cards in storage. The LDMS configuration (bottom) used to create a box of 40 DBS cards, where each card contains 4 blood spots.



Another way to approach this problem is to treat the DBS card itself as a container (meaning you would create a 1x4 container), and then treat the container that you are putting the cards into as a level. This would only work, however, if your freezer needs only one level in it, since LDMS limits you to two levels in a freezer. This would also require you to add many containers, one for each card.

There are many types of unusual specimens and container needs that exist. If you have trouble figuring out how to define a certain type of container in LDMS to meet your needs, LDMS User Support can help you.