Orders
/orders — what has been asked of this laboratory, and how far each request has got. Selecting an order opens it in a drawer, and the drawer's identity is in the address (?order=), so an order can be linked to directly.
/tests/orders and /tests/orders/:orderId are older addresses for the same thing. They still work: both redirect here, and the second one carries the order with it rather than dropping you on the bare list.
The shape of an order
One order can need three tubes, and one tube can serve six tests. That many-to-many relationship is the domain, not an inconvenience, so LabFlow keeps three separate records: the order, the specimen, and the ordered test.
The ordered test matters more than it looks. A test with no result yet is a real state — it is queryable, it ages, and it is what a worklist lists. Fold it into the result and there is nothing to list until the work is already done.
Four statuses
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
awaiting | Placed, nothing worked yet |
working | In progress |
complete | Everything asked for has been produced |
cancelled | Withdrawn, with the record of the attempt intact |
"Needs attention" is not a fifth status — it is a question, and it is derived rather than stored. An order whose specimen was rejected needs attention until a recollection arrives; storing that as a status would strand the order there for ever, because nothing would move it back.
Priority
stat · urgent · routine. Priority is part of the order, not a note on it, so a routine draw and a stat draw are different objects to a worklist rather than different phrasing to a human.
Priority records what the clinician asked for, never what the laboratory achieved. How long it actually took is a separate question, answered on the dashboard.
Importing an HL7 order
Import an HL7 order on /orders reads one HL7 v2 order message (ORM^O01), pasted or chosen as a file, in the browser. It creates a draft order and nothing else: a person then chooses Place this order or Discard draft in the drawer. There is no live feed; see Interoperability.
Orders reach the laboratory from clinicians' order forms, the front desk, accepted requests and imported HL7 order files, and a person confirms each one.
Filters
The order list filters by status, priority and free text, and every filter is held in the address — so a filtered view is shareable and survives a refresh.