Custody is not a comment field
Chain of custody is the recorded sequence of possession and location for a sample. In a modern LIMS it is a series of attributable events: received, stored, transferred, aliquoted, tested, returned, disposed. Each event has a who, when, from, and to.
If custody is implemented as a notes box, you have a diary, not a chain. Diaries do not survive inspection or staff turnover.
It starts at accessioning
Identity is created when the sample is registered — not when someone later “cleans up the sheet.” Accessioning should capture the identifier you will scan forever, the source, received condition, and the work requested.
Barcode at accession is not a gadget. It is how you stop the lab from inventing a second identifier at the freezer.
Storage is a hierarchy, not a string
“Freezer 3, somewhere on the left” is not a location. A defensible model is hierarchical: site, room, unit, shelf, rack, box, position. Moves update the hierarchy and write a custody event.
Lab managers buy LIMS in part to answer “where is it?” in seconds. That answer is only trustworthy if location is a controlled field.
Aliquots must keep lineage
The moment you split a sample, you create a new object that still owes its story to a parent. Results on the aliquot should not orphan the origin. Pools and derived samples have the same requirement.
Ask vendors to show a lineage graph or parent-child list — and then show custody on the child. Many systems can split. Fewer can explain.
Disposition closes the chain
Samples end. They are consumed, destroyed, returned, or retained. Disposition is a status with history. In a regulated data model, that history is not removed by a delete key.
This is why Aureon LIMS uses lifecycle statuses rather than hard deletes of regulated sample records. The sample can be gone from the bench and still present in the record.
What QA will ask
Expect questions like: Who had it on Tuesday? Was the transfer contemporaneous? Did the aliquot inherit holds? Can we export the chain for this study? If your LIMS cannot answer without a custom report written by a vendor, you will feel that during an inspection.
Mobile makes custody contemporaneous
Desktop-only custody encourages people to update the system after the walk to the freezer. That delay is how fiction enters the record. Mobile and barcode do not make a weak model strong, but they make a strong model usable.
See Aureon’s sample management and mobile/barcode modules for how we structure this path — core custody first, scan-first execution as an expansion.
