It's more than just inventory

While inventory records are important to the database, BSI tracks much more. There are many key areas that a successful specimen tracking system must support: specimens, inventory, workflow, shipments, and history. And it must do this in a real-time, user-friendly secure environment.

It’s specimen tracking...

Specimens are at the core of your repository needs. You will need to know everything about the specimens, not just where they are while the specimen is in-house. In addition to storage information, BSI provides tracking for processes that are done to specimens including shipping, returning to inventory, aliquoting, thawing, additives, and other processes that your repository might require. BSI tracks the ancestry of specimens as they are aliquoted, as well as discrepancies and discrepancy resolutions for specimens received by the repository. Specimens tracked by BSI are never lost or retired. If a specimen goes out of your inventory, the system will always remember what happened to it, when, by whom, and in some cases why.

It’s freezer tracking...

And not just freezers - any container in any configuration. Need straw storage? No problem, BSI can track straws, goblets, canisters, etc. What about dry storage? Again, no problem. Shelves, boxes, rooms, building, trailers, any type of container can be represented by BSI. And these containers can have their own custom-defined properties that you can use to store the characteristics that you need. For example, one BSI customer uses freezer properties to store billing information for the specimens that it contains!

It’s workflow tracking...

The shipments and requisitions modules team up to track both specimens coming into the repository and work on the specimens being processed. Shipments can track your inbound specimens and record any discrepancies that you note at time of receipt. Requisitions can help you plan and record all of your specimen processes, just like a LIMS system does. BSI also allows importing and translation of data from external sources, as well as integration with other systems to exchange data and notifications.

It’s history tracking...

BSI records an audit trail that includes every change to the database. The history recorded includes the values changed, the user who changed them, the mechanism used to make the change, and the time of the change. And the scope of what is changed is not limited to specimen data. Changes to meta-data, shipment properties, and requisition processes are also tracked.

It’s security...

BSI is designed for controlled, concurrent access. It provides a real-time, multi-user environment for tracking millions of specimens. The system controls how and in what order database updates and searches are performed. This control prevents deadlocks and race conditions. For security, BSI has user password access, three types of user access levels, and 36 user permissions (levels of access) that can be set to control access to the system functions. While you can use Excel or Access files across a network, they are not designed for secure and concurrent access.

It's BSI