Pathology & Results is where your practitioners receive, review, and release lab results and clinical correspondence — split across two separate inboxes.
Pathology Inbox
The Pathology Inbox receives structured lab results via HL7 v2 from connected laboratories (Medical Objects / Capricorn).
Reading a result
Each result displays:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Test name | The analyte or panel name |
| Value | The reported result |
| Unit | e.g. mmol/L, g/dL |
| Reference range | The lab's standard reference range |
| Abnormal flag | H (high), L (low), or Normal |
Functional reference ranges
Your admin can configure custom optimal ranges for specific analytes — separate from the lab's standard reference range. When functional ranges are set, a second indicator appears alongside the lab flag so you can see both the lab's interpretation and your clinic's preferred optimal range.
PDF reports
Complex panels — such as microbiology cultures or histology — often arrive as attached PDF reports rather than structured data. These appear as a PDF attachment within the result entry.
Manual uploads
For labs not connected via Medical Objects, you can upload results manually — this happens from the patient record, not the inbox, via a button labelled Upload & extract:
- Open the patient's record and go to the Pathology tab
- Click Upload & extract
- Select the PDF report
This does more than just store a flat PDF. Behind the scenes, Qliva extracts the text from the PDF locally, auto-detects the sending lab, and runs automatic parsing to populate structured result rows — name, value, unit, reference range, and status — the same shape of data you'd see for an HL7-received result.
Manually uploaded results appear alongside HL7-received results in the patient's Pathology tab.
Releasing results to the patient
Results are not visible to patients until you explicitly release them.
To release:
- Open the result
- Review the values
- Click Release to Patient
The patient receives a portal notification and can view the result from their portal.
Results are NOT visible to patients until you release them. Always review the result — and add a practitioner comment if needed — before releasing.
Clinical Mail Inbox
The Clinical Mail Inbox receives text-based correspondence: referral replies, letters from specialists, discharge summaries, and other clinical communications. It arrives via the same HL7 connection as pathology but is routed separately based on message type.
Working with clinical mail
- Mark as read/unread — track what you've actioned
- Link to patient record — attach the mail item to the correct patient if it hasn't been auto-matched
- Open the full text of the letter directly in the inbox
Clinical mail and pathology results are two separate inboxes in Qliva. Both arrive via the HL7 connection but are routed differently — structured results go to the Pathology Inbox, text correspondence goes to Clinical Mail.
Privacy & access
- Only clinical practitioners can access pathology results and clinical mail. Clinic admins cannot view this screen.
- Result PDFs are stored in a private, encrypted storage bucket. Access links are short-lived, but the lifetime depends on where the link came from: 60 seconds for a pathology upload opened from the patient record or the patient portal, 5 minutes for a clinical mail PDF, and 1 hour for the report link on the pathology result page. One administrative exception sits outside this range: pharmacy order documents opened from the admin portal use a 7-day link.
If a patient asks about a result and you need to share the PDF directly, download it fresh from the result and send it — don't share an old link, as it will have expired.