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Lab Station is the screen your lab lands on, and the first thing to know is what it is not: it is an analytics dashboard and a catalogue, not a work queue. Nothing on this page is a specimen waiting for you — the bench queue is Worklist.

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What you’re looking at

The heading is Lab Station. Beside it sit a date-range picker, which scopes every figure below, and a primary New Lab Test button that opens the lab-report form rather than anything on this page. Underneath are three tabs, and they do genuinely different jobs. The four tiles are Total Lab Tests, Pending Tests (“Awaiting processing”), Completed Tests (“{n}% completion rate”) and Critical Results (“Requires immediate attention”). Each carries a week-on-week comparison, and Total Lab Tests adds “{n}% monthly growth”. The seven charts are Test Volume Trends (“Daily test ordering and completion patterns”), Most Requested Tests, Turnaround Time (“Average hours to process tests”), Staff Performance (“Lab scientist activity and efficiency metrics”), Test Type Distribution, Patient Demographics and Test Correlations (“Commonly ordered test combinations”). The empty state. A brand-new lab sees zeros in every tile and blank charts, and Test List reads No lab tests found for this clinic. That is correct, not a fault — define your tests first.

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Test List is the catalogue, not a queue

This is the single most useful thing on the page to get straight. Test List is where a test is defined: its name, its category and department, and the parameters it reports — each with a unit, a reference range, normal low/high values and critical low/high limits. It never lists patients or specimens.
1

Open the catalogue

Select the Test List tab. Search with Search lab tests, and use View Columns to show or hide Test Name, Category, Department, Price, Parameters, Usage Count and Created.
2

Create the test

Select New Test Record. The Create Lab Test panel asks for Test Name * (“e.g., Complete Blood Count”), Price * and Category *. If the category picker shows No categories available, use Create New Category and give it a Category Name *, a Department * and an optional Description.
3

Add each analyte

Add the parameters the test reports. Add Test Parameter takes Parameter Name * (“e.g., Hemoglobin”), Parameter Type *, Unit (“e.g., g/dL”), Reference Range (“e.g., 12.0-15.5”), Normal Low and Normal High, Critical Low and Critical High, and Display Order. For a categorical analyte, list its Possible Values instead (“Comma-separated values, e.g., Positive, Negative, Indeterminate”).
4

Reopen it later

A row opens as View Lab Test; switch to Edit Lab Test to change anything. Usage Count tells you how heavily a test is being ordered before you change it.
Critical Low and Critical High are what make a result flag as critical. Widening or clearing them stops future results triggering the Critical Results tile and the alerts that follow it. Change them only on a clinical decision, and tell the bench when you do.

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Generate an AI lab report

1

Pick a report type

On the Reports tab, the Report Types card (“Select a lab report type”) offers Comprehensive, Test Trends, Staff Performance, Department Distribution, Parameter Abnormality, Critical Results, Patient Demographics and Test Correlations.
2

Generate it

Select Generate Report. The button reads Generating… while it works, and the written report appears beside the list. With none yet you see No lab report available — “Generate your first lab AI report to see insights about test trends, staff performance, and lab metrics.”
3

Keep or refresh it

Export saves a copy, Regenerate rebuilds it from current data, and Refresh re-reads the stored list. A generated report is a summary for a human to check, not a signed clinical document.

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Who can do this

Role decides whether Lab Station opens. Permission decides what you may do once inside. Two things surprise people here. A Lab Manager does not hold verify by default — authorising a result is a scientist’s clinical act, and it comes from the access tier, not the administrative role. And a QC Officer is review-only by design: they review QC runs and turnaround times and never alter a result. A lab scientist reaches Lab Station and the whole bench, but is denied Executive, Lab Analytics and Referral Commissions.
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. Someone never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. A figure you are not entitled to see is hidden or rendered as a dash — never as a zero.
See Permissions.

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Check it worked

  • A test you just created appears in Test List with its Parameters count.
  • Raising a request for that test moves Total Lab Tests and Pending Tests on the next reload.
  • Narrowing the date range changes every tile and chart together.
  • The test is orderable from Test requests.

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Common issues

Your catalogue is empty. Select New Test Record on the Test List tab — nothing can be ordered until a test exists here.
The date range has no activity in it. Widen the picker before assuming data is missing; the range scopes the whole Analytics tab.
Lab Station has no work queue. Use Worklist for the bench queue and Test requests for incoming clinical requests.
They are two different things. The chart here plots average hours per test against a flat 24-hour target. The Turnaround time page is the real dashboard, with your own targets and breach reporting.
Categories are created separately. Use Create New Category inside the same panel, then pick it.
The export could not be built. Select Regenerate, wait for the report to finish, then export again.

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FAQ

A price is set on the test here, and the commercial side of it — what a payer is actually charged and how it reaches an invoice — lives on Billing. Test List defines the analytes; billing defines the money. The two are constantly confused.
No. New Lab Test at the top of the page opens the lab-report form for a patient’s test. To add a test to the catalogue, use New Test Record on the Test List tab.
Yes, and Usage Count shows how heavily. Results already reported keep the ranges they were reported against; the change applies to work from then on.
Treat it as an internal summary. It is generated from your own numbers and needs a person to check it before it leaves the lab — an authorised patient report is a different document entirely.
It groups lab activity by age band and gender so you can see who your lab serves. It names no one, and opening the dashboard is written to your audit log like any other view of patient data.