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Roles and access

Access is grant-based and scoped to a study, and optionally to a single site within it. A user has no standing authority anywhere until a grant gives it to them for a specific study.

RoleCan
Lab adminEverything within a study, including granting roles.
Lab managerManage the study; verify and sign results; review the audit trail.
TechnicianAccession and store samples; order tests; enter results.
AccessionerAccession and store samples only.
MonitorReview audit trails and custody records (external reviewer).
Read-onlyRead access through study membership; no actions.

Two separations are enforced, not conventional:

  • Enterer ≠ verifier. The four-eyes rule on results means the person who enters a result cannot verify it. This is checked by the system, not left to procedure — see orders and results.
  • Admin ≠ lab authority. System administrators, who run the platform, hold no laboratory authority. Administering the software and signing off on lab work are deliberately separate powers; the same person may hold both, but through two distinct grants, and the audit trail reflects which one they were acting under.

This is why access checks are authority-scoped rather than a simple admin/non-admin split (requirement P11-04): the question is never “are you an admin?” but “do you hold this specific authority in this study?”

The same pattern governs the newer workflows. Terminal disposal of a specimen is a supervisor-only authority, separate from ordinary sample handling. The lab-wide reagent inventory is authorized on an inventory.manage authority held in any study, because reagents are not study-scoped. And the QC review board is deliberately read-only — it introduces no new writes and no new authority, so reviewing trends can never alter a record.