A result read against the laboratory's own reference interval

A reference interval is a property of a laboratory, not of a species. It is built from that laboratory's own healthy-animal population, on that laboratory's analyser, with that laboratory's reagents, and two accredited laboratories can publish intervals that do not overlap and both be correct.

Everything on this page follows from that one fact.

measurements in the fallback catalogue: 49 laboratory analytes, and 7 vitals and clinical scores

The report's own interval wins

When a report supplies its own interval, that interval is the truth for that result, and it is the one the chart is drawn against.

Talli does not replace it with a tidier number, and does not average competing published figures into a house range.

The fallback catalogue, and what it is for

A value typed in by hand, or read from a report that printed no interval, still needs an honest band to sit against. For that there is a catalogue of 56 measurements: 49 laboratory analytes and 7 vitals and clinical scores. It is a display fallback and it is labelled as one.

Every interval in it names where it came from, and the name is shown next to the interval in the app. Where mainstream sources disagree, the competing figures are recorded beside the interval rather than averaged away. Missing data is a gap, not a guess: nothing in that file is invented to fill one.

Sources drawn on include Cornell University AHDC and eClinPath, UC Davis VMTH, Michigan State University VDL, IDEXX reference laboratories and in-house analysers, Antech, the Merck Veterinary Manual, the IRIS staging guidelines, and ACVIM consensus statements.

Only the laboratory may call a result abnormal

Talli does not decide that a result is normal or abnormal. Only a flag printed by the reporting laboratory can do that, and the app reports it as the laboratory's flag rather than as its own judgement.

The same rule governs colour. A chip is grey by default, and colour never asserts danger on its own. "Outside range" means outside the reporting laboratory's reference interval, which is a factual statement about a printed number and nothing more.

The nine labels a value can carry, and they are always shown as words next to the colour:

Within range
Below range
Above range
Outside range
Worth watching
Not enough data
Information
Processing
AI observation

One analyte, every panel

A panel is kept as it was reported, and a single analyte can also be read on its own, across every panel on file, so a value that has been drifting for two years is visible as a line rather than as a number you have to remember.

Common questions

Why does Talli not tell me whether a value is bad?

Because the reading that says so belongs to the laboratory that ran the sample, and to the veterinarian who examined the animal. Talli reports the flag the laboratory printed and shows the interval the report supplied.

My two clinics print different ranges for the same test. Which is right?

Both may be. The interval is the laboratory's own, so the result is read against the interval its own report carried.

Can Talli read the values off a photograph of my printout?

No. Values are read from a PDF's own text layer. A photograph or a scan needs a person, and the reason is set out on the AI page.