Parent-Child Linkage

There are two primary ways to create a link between a parent specimen and its children: manually or via a requisition task.

Manually creating a linkage is done when the creation of the new child specimen is tracked outside of BSI; for example, if an outside lab or facility is responsible for creating it. In this case, the BSI ID of the parent specimen must be added as the Parent ID field value for the child.

When creating children via a requisition, one of the following tasks must be used: Aliquot, Process, or Pool. After the task has been completed, the Parent ID will be filled in automatically by BSI.

Lineage can be traced via reporting on the Parent ID field or via the Specimen Viewer. The Specimen Viewer displays a tree diagram showing all related specimens, including parents, grandparents, children, and sister specimens. This visual representation is the easiest way to view lineage in BSI. In the Specimen Viewer section of user preference, you can specify the data fields to be displayed on this tab of the Specimen Viewer.

The Parent ID field is a standard vial level field in BSI that tracks the direct lineage of each specimen. This field holds a single, valid BSI ID value.

The Parent ID field is displayed anywhere that you can view specimens such as data entry, shipments, reports, and aliquot related tasks like Pool tasks, or pooling via Aliquot or Process tasks. During task completion in a requisition, if any aliquots are created then the Parent ID field is automatically populated with the BSI ID of the new specimen’s direct parent. Values for the Parent ID field can also be manually entered or imported.

During requisition processing, BSI IDs for specimens’ parents are displayed in the Global Parent ID field instead of in the Parent ID field. The Parent ID field displayed in a requisition editor only shows the appropriate value for new specimens created within that same requisition.

BSI allows the combination of multiple specimens in order to create a single new child specimen. In order to track this, the “Pooled Parents” field contains the BSI ID of all parents for a child specimen.  This is different from the Parent ID field, which only links back to the first parent specimen that contributed to the pooled child. This multi-choice field provides a delimited list of Parent IDs that were used to create specific child specimens. 

The Pooled Parents field is displayed anywhere that you can view specimens such as data entry, shipments, reports, and aliquot related tasks like Pool tasks, or pooling via Aliquot or Process tasks. Role permissions for these individual tasks are required in order to begin or complete these tasks.

During each of these tasks, after specifying how you would like to group parents through the Specify Pooled Specimens dialog, the Pooled Parents field shows the BSI IDs of all parents that contributed to the child specimen in the Request Available Child BSI Id(s) dialog.

This field is not editable in the Request Available Child BSI Id(s) or Child Completion dialog.  It is automatically updated with the BSI IDs from the pooled specimens.

Parent BSI IDs can also be manually entered or imported from Shipment or Data Entry batches into the pooled parents field.  The field can be activated by clicking on the ellipses button which opens the Specify Pooled Parents dialog.  Each row will hold one BSI ID and can be added or removed.