Intelligent laboratory lockbox system

A laboratory lockbox system comprising:

• a vault unit including one or more compartments to store one or more specimens;
• at least one temperature sensor configured to measure an internal temperature of at least one compartment of the one or more compartments in the vault unit;
• a cooling mechanism configured to, based on at least the internal temperature received from the at least one temperature sensor, activate cooling functions to self-regulate the internal temperature to a designated temperature;
• one or more presence sensors configured to detect a presence of a specimen within the one or more compartments of the vault unit and configured to generate a load status based on sensing a specimen, wherein the load status includes one of a loaded status or an unloaded status;
• a control unit operably connected to at least the vault unit and the one or more presence sensors, wherein the control unit is configured to:
• receive an indication of a change in the load status from the vault unit or the one or more presence sensors wherein the load status is detected by the one or more presence sensors;
• access, via a network communication to a remote computing device, a specimen pickup workflow and determine whether the change in the load status is different than a status associated with the vault unit in the specimen pickup workflow, wherein the specimen pickup workflow is maintained by the remote computing device;
• upon determining that the change in the load status changes the status in the specimen pickup workflow, generate an optimized pickup workflow based on the change in the load status of the vault unit;
• wherein in response to the load status changing from the unloaded state to the loaded state, the optimized pickup workflow is generated to include a courier route to a location of the vault unit to pickup the specimen;
• and
• wherein in response to the load status changing from the loaded state to the unloaded state, the optimized pickup workflow is generated to remove the courier route to the location of the vault unit;
• generate a notification of the optimized pickup workflow at one or more remote computing devices separate from the vault unit;
• and
• transmit the notification of the optimized pickup workflow to a destination device.

A laboratory lockbox system comprising:

• a vault unit including one or more compartments to store one or more specimens;
• at least one temperature sensor configured to measure an internal temperature of at least one compartment of the one or more compartments in the vault unit;
• a cooling mechanism configured to, based on at least the internal temperature received from the at least one temperature sensor, activate cooling functions to self-regulate the internal temperature to a designated temperature;
• one or more presence sensors configured to detect a presence of a specimen within the one or more compartments of the vault unit and generate a load status based on sensing a specimen, wherein the load status includes one of a loaded status or an unloaded status;
• a control unit operably connected to at least the vault unit and the one or more presence sensors, wherein the control unit is configured to:
• receive an indication of a change in the load status from the vault unit;
• access a specimen pickup workflow and determine whether the change in the load status is different than a status in the specimen pickup workflow, wherein the specimen pickup workflow is maintained by a remote computing device;
• upon determining that the change in the load status changes the specimen pickup workflow, modify the specimen pickup workflow based on the change in the load status of the vault unit;
• wherein in response to the load status changing from the unloaded state to the loaded state, modify the specimen pickup workflow to include a courier route to a location of the vault unit to pickup the specimen from the vault unit;
• and
• wherein in response to the load status changing from the loaded state to the unloaded state, modify the specimen pickup workflow to remove the courier route to the location of the vault unit.