The challenge
Sanjeevani was running billing in Excel and reports in Word. It was held together by one person who had built the spreadsheets and understood how they worked, which made the lab's entire record-keeping dependent on a single member of staff being available.
The counter queue was the visible problem. At peak, around half the people waiting were not there to give a sample — they were collecting a report, or asking whether one was ready. Each of those interactions took a minute or two and blocked someone behind them who needed to register.
Rakesh Menon had looked at lab software before and been put off by the price of anything that looked capable, and by the assumption that a seven-person lab would need to hire someone technical to run it.
What we did
Migration from Excel is usually more delicate than migration from a database, because spreadsheets accumulate inconsistencies — the same patient spelled three ways, test names that drifted over time, merged cells where somebody needed a note. We cleaned what could be cleaned automatically and flagged the rest for review rather than guessing.
The change that mattered most was the smallest: a QR code on every bill. Patients scan it to see whether their report is ready and download it when it is. It costs nothing per patient, needs no phone number, and works for walk-ins who never gave contact details.
WhatsApp delivery was turned on alongside it for patients who had given a number, so most people got their report pushed to them without needing to scan anything at all.
The outcome
Counter collection visits fell by around sixty percent within the first month. The peak-hour queue, which had been running twenty-five minutes at its worst, came down to something the staff describe as manageable.
Report status calls effectively stopped. The bill answers the question, and it answers it at eleven at night when the lab is closed.
The lab also stopped printing reports by default. Paper and toner spend fell by about eighteen thousand rupees over the year, which was more than the software cost.
The QR code on the bill quietly removed a whole category of work. Patients stopped ringing to ask where their report was, because they could already see it.