Complete user guide

This guide follows the manual that ships inside the program, chapter by chapter. The manual in the program, under Help, adds every screen by name, works without internet and prints on paper.

1.Getting started

CLARUS opens on a workspace chosen by what your account is allowed to do. A receptionist lands on Reception, a technologist on Laboratory, a manager on Management. You never need to hunt for a module: each workspace opens on its own dashboard and carries only the modules that role uses.

• Sign in with the username and password your laboratory administrator issued. The first installation ships one administrator account. Change nothing else until the first-run setup wizard has finished: it records the laboratory's identity, which appears on every report you will ever issue.
• Press Ctrl + K anywhere to search patients, orders and samples by name, phone, file number or barcode.
• The workspace switcher sits in the top bar. If a module you expect is missing, your account does not carry the permission for it — ask an administrator rather than looking for another route in.

2.Patients

Register a patient once and reuse the file for every visit. The file carries demographics, contact details, national identifier, blood group, allergies, chronic conditions and current medication.

• Search before you register. A duplicate file splits a patient's history in two and the delta check that catches an impossible change between visits stops working.
• Archive a duplicate or inactive file instead of deleting it; the history is preserved.

3.Reception, orders and samples

Reception builds the order, takes the sample and starts the chain of custody. Everything downstream — reference ranges, timed protocols, billing, the report — is decided by what is captured here.

• Build the order from the catalogue: pick tests or panels, set priority (routine, urgent, STAT) and name the referring physician. Prices and discounts apply automatically.
• Receive the sample, print its barcode and label the tube at the patient's side, never later at a bench.
• Record the draw time for any test whose result depends on it. For a timed protocol (OGTT, post-prandial glucose) use the Timed action on the sample command panel: it sets the anchor time and schedules each draw, and a draw taken outside its window is held from automatic release.
• Rejecting or asking for a recollection needs a reason, and that reason is kept. A rejected or cancelled sample is final — it cannot be revived, because reviving one after verification once let a rejected specimen produce a released result.

4.Laboratory: results, verification and release

A result moves through a controlled path: entry, verification, release. Nothing reaches a patient without passing it, and every gate that stops a result says why.

• Enter numeric, qualitative, titre, calculated and composite results. Reference ranges apply by test, age and sex; previous values are shown beside the field for context.
• Calculated tests compute themselves from their inputs — LDL, VLDL, indirect bilirubin, TIBC, eGFR, procalcitonin ratio, MCV, MCH and MCHC. If you type a value into a calculated test, CLARUS keeps yours and cross-checks it against the inputs, telling you when the two disagree. It never overwrites a value a person or an analyser asserted.
• The person who entered a result cannot be the person who verifies it. That is deliberate and it is not configurable.
• A critical value must be acknowledged, and the escalation clock runs from when the work was performed, not from when it happened to be typed in.
• Releasing a blocked result requires a written reason, which is kept with the result and shown in the audit trail.
• Amending a released result revokes the old report link so a previously issued QR code can no longer verify, and the patient is told that the result changed — on every channel they consented to, whether or not the invoice is settled.

5.Reports and delivery: printing, release and the patient's copy

Everything that happens to a report after its results are approved sits in one module, Reports & Delivery, right after the laboratory: printing it, releasing it, the record of every version that was issued, the register of corrections, and sending it to the patient.

• Report Printing prints approved reports. It is the same screen as the shortcut at the top of the menu; receipts and labels stay under Reception, where the desk prints them.
• Release Queue holds the reports ready to print, publish or send; Report Versions keeps every version that was generated and Amendments every correction, with its reason.
• Patient Communications sends results through the channels the laboratory has set up, shows what did not go through, and sends it again with Retry Failed.

6.Lab-to-lab: tests sent to another laboratory

Some tests are performed by another laboratory. «معمل إلى معمل» in the main menu follows each of them from the order to the result and to what is owed for it, on three tabs: the send-out list, the laboratories, and the laboratory accounts.

• Under «المعامل», add each laboratory with its courier's name and WhatsApp number and its usual turnaround. In a test's editor, list the laboratories that perform it, each with its cost, turnaround and that laboratory's own code for the test, and mark one as the default. The patient's price stays the test's price whichever laboratory is chosen.
• A test the laboratory always sends out reaches the send-out list by itself when it is ordered. A test normally run in house can be sent out from its order with «إرسال للخارج» -- the analyser is down, the reagent is out -- and brought back while the sample is still in the building.
• Choose rows on the send-out list and press «اطلب المندوب»: one WhatsApp message per courier, naming the samples and the destination and no patient. One courier opens straight away; several give a small window with one button per courier.
• When the courier collects, choose the rows and press «سُلِّمت للمندوب»: the handover manifest prints for the courier's signature, and from this moment the other laboratory's cost is owed.
• When the result comes back, press «إدخال النتيجة» on its row: the same entry window as everywhere, and saving it marks the row received. The result still reaches the patient only through the normal «اعتماد».
• Our report never names the other laboratory and says nothing about where a test was performed. The internal screens do name it, because the staff must know where a sample went.
• «حسابات المعامل» shows, per laboratory and month, the tests sent, the cost due, the patients' price, the margin, what was paid and the balance. Record payments and an opening balance there; a mistaken payment is voided with a reason and never deleted. «كشف حساب شهري» prints one laboratory's month, closing on the balance the tab shows.

7.Catalogue and reference data

The catalogue decides what the laboratory can be asked for and how each result is judged. It is the highest-consequence configuration in the product: a wrong reference range is a wrong clinical answer on every specimen until somebody notices.

• Changing a reference range does not rewrite results already issued under the old one — each result keeps the rule that was in force when it was judged.
• CLARUS refuses an inverted or impossible range rather than accepting it and flagging every specimen.

8.Quality

Internal quality control and the Westgard rules applied to it, the corrective actions and competency records a reviewer asks for by name, and the accreditation readiness indicators built from all of it.

• Run and record controls before releasing patient work on that analyser. A manual result entered while an analyser is out of control is a soft rejection: it can be released, but only with a recorded reason.
• Westgard rules are applied automatically to control values and the violated rule is named, not just flagged.
• The accreditation readiness screen scores quality control, external assessment, turnaround, the catalogue and master data, and names what is short.
• Record a corrective action when something goes wrong, and close it when it is fixed. The closed action is the evidence, so the register keeps it. Resolving a QC violation opens one on Quality Records, and a user who approves results closes it by writing what was done.
• Record staff competency on Quality Records: who was assessed, on what, by whom, and when it falls due again. That record is what proves the training happened.

9.Billing and commercial

Pricing, collection, payer claims and the commercial agreements behind them. Money never gates a critical value or an amendment notice — it gates the report link, nothing more.

• An order splits its cost into a patient share and a payer share the moment it is created, using the price list and contract that apply to that patient.
• A refund or a write-off is an entry, never an edit: the original stands and the correction sits beside it.

10.Inventory

Reagents and consumables by lot and expiry, consumed against the work that used them.

• Stock issues first-expiry-first. A lot past its expiry is not offered.
• A recall marks the lot and lists every order that consumed it, which is the question you will be asked and the one that is hard to answer from paper.
• Count during a stocktake against what the system believes, and record the difference rather than overwriting it.

11.Analyzers and interfaces

Connecting an analyser so its results arrive by themselves. This is the highest-risk configuration in the product and the standard treats it that way.

• Add the analyser with its protocol, connection and the tests it reports, then map every analyser code to a catalogue test. An unmapped code is quarantined, not guessed.
• Record the site validation: who validated it, when, against what reference, the laboratory and IT owners, and the rollback plan. Then tick go-live approved.
• An analyser may only release results automatically once its site validation is approved for go-live. Without approval the results still arrive — they simply wait for a human, and the hold is written to the audit trail and to the log so it cannot be mistaken for a broken interface.
• Every change to an interface is recorded field by field, with the value before and the value after. Re-saving the device form does not erase the validation record.

12.Patient-facing services

The laboratory's public page, the patient result portal, and every automatic message that leaves the building. This is the part of CLARUS your patients actually see, so what it says and who it says it to are both controlled here.

• A patient reaches a result through a single-use link tied to that order. Result codes cannot be guessed from one another.
• A message goes out only on a channel the patient consented to, and the consent is recorded with a date.

13.Administration, security and settings

Who may do what, how the laboratory identifies itself, and the records that prove both. None of this was documented before this edition, and it is where an accreditation review spends most of its time.

• Give a person the permissions their work needs and no more. Permissions are checked again on the server, so hiding a button is not what protects a record.
• Employees cannot change their own password; an administrator sets it. This is deliberate in a shared-bench environment where accounts are handed over between shifts.
• The audit trail is hash-chained: each entry seals the one before it, so a deleted or edited entry breaks the chain visibly instead of disappearing. Reads of patient data are recorded too, and search terms are stored as a fingerprint rather than in clear.
• Review the audit trail on a schedule and record that you reviewed it. An unread trail satisfies nobody.