Diagnostic lab front-office & billing workflow
A diagnostic lab or collection centre has a front office too: patient registration, counter billing, referral-doctor accounting, and payment. Here is the part Hayati genuinely handles — and an honest statement of where a Laboratory Information System takes over.
Hayati handles a diagnostic lab's front-office and billing layer: patient registration, GST-correct counter billing, referral-doctor billing, and offline-first payment. It is not a Laboratory Information System (LIS) and does not replace one — sample tracking, analyzer interfacing, result validation, and quality control belong to a LIS. Hayati can operate as the front-office/billing layer alongside a LIS you keep.
The situation. You run a diagnostic lab or a collection centre. Beyond the technical laboratory work, there is a front desk that registers patients, bills tests correctly with GST, tracks referral-doctor accounting, and takes payment — often across a queue, sometimes when the internet is unreliable. That operational layer is real work, and it is separate from the laboratory science.
The important boundary, stated up front. Hayati is not a Laboratory Information System (LIS/LIMS) and does not replace one. The specimen and analytical workflow — sample tracking, analyzer/instrument interfacing, result validation, and quality control — belongs to a dedicated LIS. This page is only about the front-office and billing layer Hayati genuinely covers, and how it can coexist with the LIS you already run.
What Hayati covers for a lab
Hayati covers the lab's operational front office: registering patients at the counter, billing tests with correct HSN/GST, handling referral-doctor billing and accounting, taking payment, and keeping the counter working offline. It is the same billing and front-office spine used across Hayati, applied to a lab counter.
Concretely, the supported layer is:
- Patient registration at the counter, on one record.
- GST-correct billing of tests and packages, with HSN mapping and per-line tax — see GST billing.
- Referral-doctor billing — tracking which referrer sent which patient for accounting purposes.
- Offline-first payment — the counter keeps billing when connectivity drops.
Where a lab also stocks consumables or runs a small dispensary, inventory with batch discipline applies to those lines.
What a LIS covers that Hayati does not
A Laboratory Information System owns the analytical workflow: specimen/sample tracking, barcoding, analyzer and instrument interfacing, result entry and validation, and quality control. Hayati does none of these and does not claim to. If you need those functions, you need a LIS — Hayati does not replace it.
To be completely clear about the category boundary, these functions belong to a LIS and are outside Hayati's scope:
- Specimen/sample tracking and barcoding.
- Analyzer or instrument interfaces.
- Result entry, validation, and authorisation.
- Quality control and pathology automation.
- Any diagnostic interpretation or clinical decision support.
We do not claim laboratory instrument integration or specimen tracking, because those are not part of what Hayati does.
How the two coexist
Many labs already run a LIS they are happy with, and what they actually lack is a clean, GST-correct, offline-capable front office. In that situation Hayati can sit as the front-office and billing layer beside your LIS: the lab keeps its specimen and result workflow where it belongs, while registration, counter billing, and referral accounting run on Hayati. Whether and how the two exchange information (for example, whether a result hand-off is feasible for your stack) is a scoping question we document per deployment rather than assume — we describe what is genuinely supported for your setup, not connectors that may not apply.
What to verify before you choose
- Do you need a LIS, a front office, or both? If you need specimen/analyzer/result workflow, that is a LIS decision — Hayati is the front-office layer, not the LIS.
- Is your test billing GST-correct? Check HSN mapping and multi-rate handling on a real bill.
- Does referral-doctor accounting work the way you pay referrers?
- Does the counter bill offline? Important for collection centres with unreliable links.
Frequently asked questions
Hayati is not a Laboratory Information System (LIS/LIMS) and does not replace one; specimen tracking, analyzer/instrument interfacing, result validation, quality control, and diagnostic interpretation are outside its scope. Hayati provides the lab's front-office and billing layer and can coexist with a LIS; any data exchange between them is scoped per deployment, not assumed. GST-ready data is produced; filing responsibility remains with your business and CA.