Specimen tracking without patient data: why we left it out

When we designed Track My Test, our specimen tracking app for labs, one decision shaped everything else: it doesn’t store patient information. No names, no birth dates, no medical record numbers, no insurance details and no results. A specimen is identified only by the lab’s own accession number, the ID already on the tube’s barcode.

This post explains why, what it means in practice, and how a patient can still follow their sample.

Tracking doesn’t need to know who the patient is

Ask what a lab needs to know to track a specimen and the answers are all about the specimen: where it is, which step it’s at, who handled it last, how long it has been there, whether it was frozen and thawed, when it expires. None of that requires the patient’s identity. The lab’s existing system, its LIS or EHR, already links accession numbers to patients, and that’s where the link should stay.

Keeping patient data out has practical benefits:

• Less to protect. Data that isn’t stored can’t leak. A specimen ID on its own tells an outsider very little.
• Simpler to adopt. A tool that never holds patient details is easier to evaluate and put in place than one that becomes another copy of sensitive records.
• Safer AI connections. Track My Test lets lab members connect Claude to ask about specimens and freezers. With no patient information in the system, there is none for the assistant to see.

We don’t claim this makes any lab “compliant” with anything; compliance depends on the lab’s whole setup. It does mean Track My Test isn’t designed to be a store of patient records, and we ask labs not to type patient details into it.

How patients follow a sample without their details

Patients often want to know where their test is. Track My Test answers that without knowing who they are:

1. The lab creates a tracking code for the specimen. It’s random, separate from the accession number, and shown once; only a hash of it is stored.
2. The patient opens trackmytest.com/t/ followed by their code, or enters it on the track a test page.
3. The page shows the lab’s name, the stage (Collected, In transit, At the lab, Testing, Complete) with times, and the accession number masked to its last few characters, so the patient can recognise it and nobody else learns it.

The page never shows results; when testing is complete, it says the patient’s provider will be in touch. The lab can turn a code off at any time. Because codes are random rather than sequential, nobody can guess their way to someone else’s page. If you’re a patient wondering about timing, our guide to how long lab results take covers common tests.

The same principle in our other software

This isn’t new for us. Hark, our meeting recorder, transcribes on your own computer so recordings don’t need to be uploaded, and we wrote about the wider idea in choosing software that respects your data. In every product the question is the same: what is the least data the software needs to do its job well?

For specimen tracking, the answer is the specimen. Read more about Track My Test or join early access.