There is no password to choose and no card to enter.

Your account comes from Google, so this form asks only for the things Google cannot tell us: which laboratory, where it is, and what kind of work it does. It takes about a minute, and the laboratory itself is set up afterwards rather than here.

Two of the three ways people arrive at LabFlow do not go through this page at all. The first thing below is working out which one you are — it is thirty seconds, and it saves filling in a form that was never yours.

Which of these is you?

The answer decides whether there is anything to fill in, and where you end up.

Your route in

I am bringing a laboratory to LabFlowYou will own the laboratory’s workspace and add colleagues to it. This is the route that continues on this page.My laboratory already uses LabFlowThen you do not register. Somebody there creates your user record, and you sign in with the address they listed.I am a patient looking for my resultsResults reach you from the laboratory that ran the test. Finding that laboratory is the first step, not this form.

About the laboratory

Six questions, four of them required. Nothing here is a qualification test — a laboratory that answers all six is not more likely to be accepted than one that answers four.

The laboratory’s name

As it appears on your accreditation or registration certificate, not an abbreviation. It becomes the name on every report the laboratory issues.

Town or city

Your job title

In your own words. Your LabFlow role is set during setup and is a separate thing.

What kind of laboratory is it?

Hospital laboratoryInpatients and an emergency department, so critical results and turnaround are the pressure.Standalone diagnostic centreWalk-in patients and referring clinicians, usually with collection points and home collection.Reference laboratoryWork sent in by other laboratories. Send-away tracking and specimen custody carry the weight.Clinic-attached laboratoryA small bench inside a practice. Usually one or two disciplines and a handful of users.Research or academic laboratoryStudy samples rather than patients. Say so — the clinical release rules behave differently and you should know how before you commit.

This decides which modules are switched on by default during setup. Nothing is locked — a clinic laboratory that later starts running cultures turns microbiology on and it appears.

Roughly how many tests a week

Optional, and an estimate is fine. It is one of the three figures that drives a quote, so answering it now saves a round trip later — the pricing page explains the other two.

Anything we should know

Optional. Never include patient identifiers or clinical details here. This inbox is not part of the clinical boundary, for the same reason the contact page says so.

I have read how LabFlow handles laboratory and patient dataThe terms, the privacy policy and the HIPAA-conscious statement, which says plainly that no software is HIPAA compliant.

This one has to be ticked. It is the part people are surprised by later.

Google supplies the name, the email address and the profile picture. Nothing else, and no password ever.

What this route doescontinues here

You become the first user of a new laboratory workspace and its owner. Everything else — departments, colleagues, the test catalogue — is set up afterwards, and can be changed at any time.

Ends atLaboratory setup

You needA Google account and the laboratory’s name

TakesAbout a minute here, twenty in setup

ReversibleYes — an empty laboratory can be deleted outright

The other two routes end somewhere else entirely, and choosing one above changes every line in this panel. That is the point of it: the consequence is readable before the button is pressed rather than discovered after.

Six things asked for. Five things never asked for.

A registration form is where a product decides what kind of relationship it wants. This is the whole list, in both directions.

A passwordNever asked

There is no credential table to breach and no reset flow to impersonate. Sign-in is Google’s, and so is everything about protecting it.

A card, or any payment detailNever asked

There is no purchase path in LabFlow today and no trial that converts into one. Taking a card now would be taking it for nothing.

Anything about a patientNever asked

Not here, and not in the free-text box either — the note under it says so before you start typing. Registration happens outside the clinical boundary, so nothing identifying a person belongs in it.

A phone number for a sales callNever asked

Nobody rings. If a conversation is needed it starts as a reply to an email you can ignore, which is the same promise the contact page makes.

The laboratory’s name, town and kindRequired

The name goes on every report the laboratory issues, the town sets the time zone every timestamp is recorded against, and the kind decides which modules start switched on.

Your job titleRequired

So a reply is addressed to a person rather than to a laboratory. It is not your LabFlow role — that is one of ten, it decides what you can do rather than what you are called, and it is set during setup.

Weekly test volumeOptional

One of the three figures behind a quote. Leaving it empty costs nothing and the form still submits — which is the whole difference between optional and required, and a difference plenty of forms fail to honour.

Your accreditation certificateLater, in setup

Asked for where it belongs, and only because a laboratory that publishes an accreditation claim on the public directory has to be able to evidence it. An expired certificate is shown as expired rather than hidden.

Four steps, and none of them is a phone call.

Setup is the longer half and it is the useful half. It is also resumable — leaving halfway through loses nothing, and there is no reviewer waiting between steps.

01The account existsGoogle confirms who you are; LabFlow creates the workspace and makes you its owner. Instant, and nothing is queued for approval.

02The laboratory is describedName, address, time zone, accreditation. This is the part that ends up on reports, so it is the part worth getting right first.

03Departments are switched onHaematology, chemistry, microbiology and the rest. Each one brings its own worklists, reference ranges and quality-control rules with it.

04Colleagues are addedOptional, and skippable. A laboratory of one works perfectly well until it is not one, and people can be added at any time afterwards.

Being listed on the public directory is a separate application, deliberately. A workspace is yours the moment setup finishes; a public listing is a claim about a laboratory that patients will read, so a person reads it first. The listing application has five states of its own and it does not begin here.

Three things worth having open before setup.

None of them blocks you. Having them to hand is the difference between twenty minutes and two sittings.

The accreditation certificate

The scheme, the certificate number and the expiry date, as a PDF or a photograph. A laboratory that declares an accreditation on the public directory has to be able to evidence it, and an expired date is shown as expired rather than hidden.

Which disciplines actually run

Not which ones you might add — which ones have a bench and somebody qualified to sign out of them. Switching a discipline on brings its worklists and quality-control rules with it, and an empty one is noise on every screen.

The email addresses of two colleagues

Ideally somebody who can validate results and somebody who collects. A laboratory with exactly one user has one person who can release anything, and that is a bottleneck long before it is a safety problem.

Registering commits a laboratory to nothing.

There is no contract, no minimum term and no card on file, because there is nothing yet to buy. A workspace that turns out to be wrong for a laboratory is deleted, and deleting it takes everything with it — that page says exactly what “everything” reaches.

The realistic reason to stop is that LabFlow does not fit. The comparison pages are written to help you find that out in ten minutes instead of ten weeks.

Back to the form Where it is the weaker choice

Still weighing it up? Write instead — one inbox, read by the LabFlow team, and no case number coming.