Start from what the specimen requires.
Ordinary transport is planned around the road: distance, stops, a driver’s day. Laboratory transport has to be planned around the material — and the material sets terms the road knows nothing about.
Why laboratory transport is different
- Distance
- Cost per stop
- The driver’s route
- Delivery by end of day
- A window that closes
- A condition that has to hold
- A named holder at every moment
- Receiving hours at the laboratory
What ABLN is designing
Four capabilities, each stated with what it depends on. None of them is operating today.
Scheduled transport In design
Regular runs between collection sites and laboratories. The schedule is built from receiving hours and material windows, not from a fixed loop.
Depends onreceiving hours, and the material each site accepts.
Urgent, on-demand transport In design
A defined response for specimens that cannot wait: who is called, how fast the pickup happens, and how the run is recorded.
Depends onthe response time a laboratory actually needs, defined with the laboratory.
Chain of custody In design
Every handoff produces a record — who held the specimen, when, where, and in what state — so the journey can be reconstructed afterwards.
Depends onthe record format receiving laboratories will accept.
Exception response In design
A late run, a condition that drifts, a closed road: each has a decided response, with a named person and a next step, before it ever happens.
Depends onescalation contacts and the decisions only the laboratory can make.
How ABLN thinks about the movement
The specimen passes through five states. The requirement travels through all of them.
- Collected — the requirement is set: window, condition, custody.
- Protected — the specimen is packaged to hold its condition, and custody is recorded.
- In transit — the carrier holds the specimen; the window is being spent.
- Handoff — the holder changes. The requirement does not.
- Received — the laboratory accepts the specimen, and the record closes.