Why spreadsheets are harder than databases
Migrating from another lab package is mostly mechanical: the data has a defined structure, and mapping one structure to another is tedious but predictable.
Spreadsheets have no enforced structure. Over three years the same patient gets entered as Ramesh Kumar, R. Kumar and Ramesh K. A test called Sugar F becomes FBS becomes Fasting Blood Sugar. Somebody merges cells to fit a note. A column gets inserted and the formulas below it are never updated.
None of that is carelessness — it is what happens to any spreadsheet maintained by several people over time. It just means migration requires judgement rather than only mapping.
What we need from you
Send us the spreadsheets as they are. Do not clean them first — you will spend a weekend on it and we will have to check the result anyway, and cleaning by hand tends to introduce its own errors.
- Your patient register, however it is organised
- Your billing sheets, including historical years if you want them carried across
- Your test list with rates, even if it lives in three places
- A few sample reports as Word or PDF files, so we can rebuild your format
- Your referring doctor list, if you keep one
What we do with it
We run automated matching to identify likely duplicate patients — same phone number with different name spellings, same name and age at the same address. Confident matches are merged; anything ambiguous is flagged for you rather than guessed at.
Test names are normalised against a standard list, with your local names kept as aliases so your staff can still search for Sugar F and find it.
Anything we cannot interpret confidently is put in a review list rather than dropped. You see exactly what came across, what was merged and what needs a decision, before anything goes live.
The decisions only you can make
How far back to bring historical billing. Everything is possible, but three years is usually the practical answer — older data is rarely consulted and the spreadsheets are usually least reliable at the start.
Whether to bring historical reports. If reports exist only as Word files named by patient, we can attach them to the right patient record, but matching is imperfect where filenames are inconsistent. Some labs prefer to keep the old files for reference and start clean.
What to do about duplicates we cannot resolve. Usually merging is right, but for patients with the same name and age at the same address, that is a judgement call we will not make for you.
How long it takes
For a small lab with two or three years of reasonably consistent spreadsheets, migration takes two to three days including your review. Messier or longer histories take a week.
The work happens alongside your existing operation. You keep using the spreadsheets until you have reviewed the migration and are satisfied, then switch between working days.
None of it is charged.