Guide ·
Specimen tracking and who it is really for.
Specimen tracking is the practice of recording each specimen's identity, location and handling from collection to disposal — who touched it, when, and what they did. The word usually signals a clinical or pathology lab, and those labs need a validated system. tinysamples is not one. If you are a research group tracking a collection, read on: free for 100 specimens.
What is specimen tracking?
Recording, for every specimen, what it is, where it is, and every step it has been through — with the person and the timestamp attached to each step. Collection, accession, processing, storage, retrieval, disposal. The record has to survive the people who made it.
The mechanics are much the same as sample tracking. What differs is the obligation: in a clinical setting the record is a regulated artefact, and that changes which software you are allowed to use.
Are you a clinical lab or a research lab?
This is the question that decides your tool, and it is worth answering before you compare anything.
| Clinical / diagnostic | Research | |
|---|---|---|
| Material | Patient specimens, reported results | Cultures, isolates, aliquots, collections |
| Governed by | CLIA, CAP, 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA | Your own SOPs, grant and journal expectations |
| Record must be | Validated, signed, audit-defensible | Accurate, complete, searchable |
| Typical tool | A validated LIS or clinical LIMS | A LIMS, a sample tracker, or a spreadsheet |
| tinysamples fits? | No | Yes, for groups under 20 people |
If you are in the clinical column, the vendors built for you include SCC Soft Computer, LigoLab and NovoPath. We have no relationship with any of them and earn nothing from saying so — they are simply the category you need, and we are not in it.
What does a research specimen record need?
Without the regulatory overhead, the useful record is short. A permanent ID that is never reused, what the specimen is, who owns it now, where it is stored, what stage it has reached, and a dated log of every action taken on it.
The log is the part that spreadsheets lose, because editing a cell destroys what it said before. Everything else a sheet handles fine — which is why our template is free and asks for no email.
What tinysamples does for a research collection
Register a specimen and it gets a permanent ID. Log each action — prepared, aliquoted, moved, thawed, discarded — and it is timestamped to the second with the name of whoever logged it. Search any of it later. All of it works in a phone browser at the freezer, gloves on, with nothing to install.
What it does not do: barcode scanning, label printing, instrument integration, signed chain of custody, or any compliance module. Those absences are the whole reason the fork above sits this high on the page.
Free for 100 samples. No card.