Lab results from the laboratory's PDF or a photo

Read the lab's PDF or a photo of its sheet into a form, check each value, the site's lab profile.

Lab results need not be copied into a form by hand: upload the PDF the laboratory sent, or take a photo of its paper sheet, and YouEDC Capture lays the results out on the rows of the form. You compare each value with the document and confirm it; nothing goes into the form without your confirmation. The history of each value names the document it came from.

How to fill in a form from the lab’s PDF

1. Open the patient’s form with lab results (for example, “HbA1c, glucose and lipids”) and click Fill in from the lab’s PDF or a photo. Whoever enters data sees the button when the form has lab rows with units.
2. Choose the lab’s PDF (up to 10 MB and 10 pages). It must be a PDF with text, as laboratories send by e-mail or publish in their portal. For a paper report, take a photo of it instead (see below).
3. The document check opens. Compare every line with the report. Lines marked “Matches” can be confirmed as they are, lines marked “Check” need the tick Compared with the document or a corrected value, and lines marked “Not usable” do not go into the form unless you enter the value yourself.
4. Lines of the document that YouEDC did not recognise are shown below the table. If one of them is a row of the form under another name, choose the row of the form for it and click Propose for the chosen rows. A report of another patient or visit is removed with Drop the document.
5. Check the date the sample was taken, tick that this is your patient’s document and that you compared every value with it, and click Confirm and fill in the form.
6. The values appear in the form under a blue notice with the document’s number (LD-1, LD-2…). Review the form and save it as usual: the form’s checks, the site’s ranges and queries work just as with manual entry.

How to fill in a form from a photo of the paper sheet

1. On the same page, under Or a photo of the paper sheet, tap Photo of the sheet. On a phone the camera opens; on a computer choose a picture or a scan (JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB).
2. Take the sheet flat, in good light, so that its table fills the frame. The photo appears with a frame of four corners: drag them onto the corners of the results table and leave the header with the patient’s name outside. Only the piece inside the frame is straightened and sent.
3. Click Read the photo. If the piece is too small or blurred, the page says so before sending: take the photo again, closer and steadier.
4. The document check opens, as for a PDF, but next to every line you see its piece of the photo. On a photo every value needs the tick Compared with the document, even one marked “Matches”: compare the number with the piece next to it, tick it or correct it.
5. Then confirm the document and save the form as for a PDF.

A photo is read less surely than a PDF: on our test sheets about nine values in ten are read right from an ordinary photo, and nearly all the rest are either not found (you enter them by hand) or marked “Check”. That is why every value of a photo is compared by you. Lines the reader was unsure of say why:

• hard to read on the photo: the number was read with low confidence;
• two readings of the number differ: two readings of the number differ;
• the decimal places differ from the range: the comma may have been lost (53 instead of 5,3);
• the lab’s arrow was read as a last digit: the last digit was left out (6,31 became 6,3 with the “high” flag);
• only a limit is read here: the value itself was not found, only “< 41”.

What YouEDC checks by itself

• The patient. The sex and year of birth in the report’s header are compared with the patient card, the date the sample was taken with the date of the visit. Anything that differs is shown as a warning. If the same PDF was already uploaded in this study, you see that too.
• The name of the test. Laboratories name tests their own way: “Глюкоза (сыворотка)”, “Glucose”, “GLU”. YouEDC knows the usual Russian and English names and marks a name that is only similar “Check”.
• Units. When the laboratory gives a result in other units (mg/dL instead of mmol/L, µmol/L instead of mg/dL), the value is converted and the original is shown next to it. When there is no unit or it cannot be converted, the line is not confirmed by itself.
• Plausibility. A value far off the lab’s range (a lost comma or digit), a lab flag that does not agree with the value, a result below or above what the analyser measures, and a value outside what the form accepts all make the line “Check” or “Not usable”.
• Ranges. When the site has lab ranges loaded and the document’s range differs, the line says so.

The site’s lab profile

When you confirm a line matched by hand or by a similar name, YouEDC remembers this laboratory’s name for your site. Next time such a line is proposed by itself, marked “matched by the site’s lab profile”. Each site has its own profile. A data manager takes off a wrong match with Take off on the Lab documents page: it is not deleted but marked as taken off, with who did it and when.

The study’s lab documents

The menu item Lab documents lists every document read in the study (each person sees only their sites): number, patient, visit and form, how many lines matched, how many needed checking, how many were changed during the check, and the state. The share of changes by site shows where a laboratory writes in an unusual way and the profile is worth extending.

Patient data and audit

• The PDF is not stored. The report’s header carries the patient’s name, so the file is not kept after reading. What remains is its SHA-256 fingerprint, the result lines (test, value, unit, range), the proposals and what you confirmed. Of the header only the result of comparing the sex, year of birth and date is kept.
• The photo’s piece is kept. Of a photo, the straightened piece that was read is kept with the document as the source of the values (in the portal’s file storage, never in the database). Only people who enter data in the study see it. Leave the patient’s name outside the frame.
• Audit. Reading a document is written to the audit trail: who, when, how many lines matched and how many need checking. The history of each saved value names the document it came from. The investigator enters and confirms the value, just as with manual entry (ALCOA+, 21 CFR Part 11).
• No outside service. A PDF is read by plain parsing of its text, a photo by the open-source reader Tesseract, both on the YouEDC server itself: nothing is sent anywhere.