I designed and developed the first in-house serology module for United Therapeutics' lab information system, working end to end with one other engineer. Our system replaces a manual process: spreadsheets, paper custody forms, and ad-hoc signing. The whole workflow is now structured, digital, and built to be audited..
Sample custody, assay results, and signed reports lived in three places at once: Excel, paper forms, and shared folders. That made records hard to search, hard to audit, and easy to lose track of. My work covers the full path: intake and custody, accessioning and storage, recording assay runs, and a signed reporting form.
My teammate and I captured requirements straight from client meetings, and we turned them into working software. As we built, we checked each workflow against real client needs in live demos. The people who use the tool saw it early, and their feedback shaped what we shipped.
The old chain-of-custody forms didn't capture collection date at all. I discovered through client conversations that the lab was inferring it from the date a sample arrived, which can be inaccurate. The system now requires collection date at submission, so reports rest on when a sample was collected.
A recorded result cannot be quietly re-entered, and required fields are enforced before a specimen is accessioned. The system refuses to store an incomplete or ambiguous record, even when allowing it would be easier.