Last updated: 10 September 2026
DeltaLab is a native app for South African doctors that lets you search and view NHLS TrakCare lab results directly on your phone, using your own NHLS portal login. It is free for five patients a day, with an optional subscription for unlimited use.
For any question, problem, or feedback, email joshcull1@gmail.com. Describe what you were doing and what happened — a screenshot helps, but please don’t include patient names, hospital numbers, or medical-record numbers in anything you send us.
DeltaLab is free for five patients a day. That resets every day at midnight, so you can keep using it for free indefinitely.
If you need more than five in a day, an optional subscription removes the limit entirely. Monthly and annual plans are available, and first-time subscribers get a one-month free trial. You can see the plans in the app under Settings → See subscription plans, or when you reach the daily limit.
Opening a patient counts, once per patient per day. Searching does not, so you can search and refine as much as you like for free. Reopening a patient you have already opened today is free and unlimited, so going back to check on the same patient through the day never costs you anything.
The count is kept on your phone and is never sent to us — see the Privacy Policy for exactly what it stores (a one-way fingerprint that cannot be turned back into a medical-record number), and note that it deliberately survives reinstalling the app, so reinstalling will not give you a fresh five.
Quite a lot:
Your allowance resets at midnight. If you need it now, subscribing removes the limit immediately.
Because the results are already on your phone, so there is no reason to hide them from you. What the subscription pays for is fetching new data from NHLS. Once your daily allowance is spent, the app will show you everything it already has and stop making new requests until tomorrow.
NHLS portal sessions expire after a period of inactivity, the same as they would in a web browser. DeltaLab normally signs you back in automatically in the background, using the login saved on your phone, so you shouldn’t see a sign-in screen for this.
If it does ask for your password, NHLS has rejected the saved one — usually because your NHLS password was changed or has expired. Sign in with your current password (Settings → Credentials, or the sign-in screen), or use “Forgot password?” to set a new one through NHLS.
NHLS locks an account after a few failed sign-in attempts. The lock is applied and lifted by NHLS, not by DeltaLab — we have no way to unlock it for you. Contact NHLS (your NHLS system administrator) directly to have the account unlocked. To help you avoid a lockout, DeltaLab tells you how many failed attempts you have made, so check your username and password carefully before trying again.
If you have forgotten your password, use “Forgot password?” on the sign-in screen (or Settings → “Reset NHLS password”). It opens NHLS’s own reset form in your browser, and NHLS emails you a temporary password.
Go back to the patient’s episode list, pull down to refresh it, and reopen the episode — DeltaLab will fetch the results from NHLS again. The official lab report PDF (the PDF button on the episode) is always the authoritative record, and DeltaLab is not a diagnostic device, so if the two ever disagree, go by the report.
If it keeps happening, email us describing what you saw. You don’t need to include any patient details — please don’t send names, hospital numbers or record numbers.
This means your phone has an internet connection but the NHLS portal didn’t respond, or returned an error. Usually that is genuine — NHLS is temporarily unavailable — and it clears on its own; the app keeps retrying in the background.
Older versions could show this message on a weak or patchy connection even when NHLS was working. Since the September 2026 update the app checks NHLS directly before announcing an outage, and a slow link is reported as “Slow connection to NHLS” instead (below). If you still see “NHLS appears to be down” and a search works when you tap Retry, please tell us — that is the case we want to hear about.
If the app says “Slow connection to NHLS”, requests are taking too long to come back. That can be a weak signal or NHLS running slowly — the app can’t tell which — so try again in a moment, or move somewhere with better signal. If your phone has no connection at all, it says “You appear to be offline” instead.
DeltaLab’s subscription is sold and billed entirely by Apple through your Apple ID — we never see your payment details. To view, change, or cancel your subscription: Settings app → [your name] → Subscriptions, or from within DeltaLab: Settings → Manage subscription. Refunds are handled by Apple, not by us — request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.
A subscription auto-renews until you cancel it. Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends to avoid the next charge; you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. If you were on the one-month free trial, cancelling before it ends means you are never charged.
Tap Restore purchases — in the app under Settings → Restore purchases, or on the subscription screen. That re-checks your Apple ID and should restore access immediately. This is also what to use on a new phone, or after reinstalling. If it still does not work, email us with the Apple ID email you subscribed with (not the password) and we will look into it.
See our Privacy Policy for exactly what DeltaLab does and doesn’t collect, and how to clear on-device data yourself (Recent tab → “Clear all”, or Settings → “Clear all data & log out”). If you are deleting the app, use “Clear all data & log out” first: iOS keeps some app data in the Keychain after an app is deleted, and that button is what removes it. For anything not covered there, email us.
We’d like to hear about it. Email joshcull1@gmail.com with as much detail as you can — what you tapped, what you expected, and what happened instead.
Joshua Cullinan — joshcull1@gmail.com