Reading lab results

Lab reports uploaded to a client’s record are parsed into individual markers so you can see them in a table and track them over time. This page explains what that table shows, and one thing it deliberately does not.

What the table shows

Each marker gets a row: its name, the value, the unit, the reference range as the laboratory printed it, and where the value sits relative to that range.

The Position column has three states: in range, below range and above range. Where a report gives no reference range for a marker, you will see no range given instead.

Why there is no red or green

Protocol shows you where a number sits. It does not tell you what that number means.

That is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. Protocol is a wellness and optimization platform: it does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. It never labels a result critical, abnormal or normal, because that is a clinical judgement. The laboratory’s reference range is the laboratory’s fact and we show it as printed. Deciding what a value means is a conversation for your client and their doctor.

In practice this is also the more useful view. A single value outside a reference range is frequently unremarkable, and a value inside one can still be moving in a direction worth watching. What matters for coaching is the trend across that person’s own history, which is what the marker’s chart on the client record is for.

Tracking a marker over time

Markers recognised across multiple reports are charted on the client record, so you can see the direction of travel rather than a single snapshot. Upload each new report as it arrives and the history builds itself.

The trend cards use a different comparison

Those trend cards, at the top of the Labs tab, are the one place on this tab where you will see colour. They are the same cards used for biometrics, and they compare a value against Protocol’s own optimal range, not against the range your laboratory printed. The two can disagree, and when they do the laboratory’s range is the one attached to the actual result.

Protocol’s optimal ranges are display bands, not a clinical assessment: some are banded by age or gender, and some are computed from the client’s own history. The cards say so underneath. The report table below them stays uncoloured for the reason above.

If a result concerns you

Raise it with the client and encourage them to discuss it with their doctor. Protocol is designed to help that conversation happen better informed. It is not a monitoring service and nobody at Protocol reviews uploaded results.

For the full statement of what Protocol is and is not built to do, see Intended Use.