Specimen identifiers
All specimens in LDMS are assigned a unique specimen identifier.
There are three types of specimen identifiers that can appear in LDMS:
- global specimen ID
- This is a unique identifier assigned to all specimens.
- specimen ID
- This identifier may or may not be unique. It is only used by LDMS; LDMS will not assign a specimen ID to specimens added using LDMS.
- other specimen ID
- This identifier is intended for laboratories to use to assign their own, internal-use identifiers as needed.
Important: LDMS for Windows and LDMS use different formats for the global specimen
ID. The format used by LDMS is longer, and contains the originating laboratory’s ID. For
example, the global specimen ID “0500-0005JE00-000” indicates that the specimen
originated from LDMS laboratory 500.
The global specimen ID assigned by LDMS links a primary specimen to any aliquot specimens created from it. Primaries and aliquots derived from them will have the same global specimen ID up to the dash character. The last three numbers are the sequence number. A sequence number of “-000” indicates that the global specimen ID belongs to a primary specimen; any other number indicates that it belongs to an aliquot specimen.
Figure: The global specimen ID of primary and aliquot specimens. This image shows the relationship between a parent primary and aliquots derived from it.
