More than 600 of your laboratory peers are already registered for Cut Your QC. https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F5IRlqySRR6eRcrm9Zz9mQ Now there are some qualifiers, of course. Not every lab nor every instrument is going to be able to reduce QC. A badly engineered instrument. Or a poorly maintained and deteriorating instrument. Or a poor...
An Indonesian study in Diagnostics attempted to make a comparison between Siemens and Roche instrumentation using Peer Group Sigma metrics. Out of 30 assays, Roche won 29 of 30. I can't say I wholeheartedly agree with the methodology of the study: peer group data can obscure what individual laboratories experience. The details can get lost in ...
Like many authors, I keep track of where I'm cited. So I was a bit surprised to see I had been referenced in a paper in the Agricultural Association of Textile Chemical and Critical Reviews Journal: https://doi.org/10.21276/AATCCReview.2026.14.03.22 Not the usual journal I expect. But even more curious, the title of the paper is "An overview of qua...
After premiering this event at ADLM, we are opening it up to everyone through zoom. Please join us September 25th, at 11 am central standard time. At last, a frank look at why we need to do less QC, and how we can make those reductions safely. If you enjoy being out of control every day, if you get a thrill every time you have to repeat a con...
"I have a question about establishing a Levey-Jennings control chart. laboratories should collect a minimum of 20 measurements over at least 10 days to calculate the mean and SD for the chart. My question is: Is it required that these initial 20 data points must fall within the manufacturer's declared range (or assigned values) for the control...
Every so often it's useful to transpose a few practices from outside the laboratory into the laboratory, just to see how we would evaluate them. The new Tech powers are gleefully implementing a system called "surveillance pricing", which they sell as a dynamic way to sell things to customers, except it turns out that they really only want the prici...
The fallout of the IDVR continues. An interesting quote from a recent paper: "Although the EC aimed at bringing safe and effective medical tests to the EU-market, ~9,000 tests out of ~40,000 tests got lost in transition." Nearly a quarter of tests suddenly became unacceptable? That places IVDR at just above 2.2 Sigma. The proposed soluti...
A paper from Surabaya, Indonesia assessed the performance of an anonymous hematology analyzer. The study used the old CLIA 1992 goals. We updated it with an assessment using CLIA 2025 goals. And then it became clear why this instrument was not named. None of this performance would meet CLIA's standards. Is performance so bad in this analyzer, ...
This question recently came in: "We have two specific questions regarding the practical application of the 7T rule: "When applying this rule, is it mandatory to use the 1:2s rule as a starting trigger, or can the laboratory choose to use 7T independently without the 1:2s initiation? (Personally, I believe 1:2s initiation is necessary….) "When a 7T ...
The Westgard Rules, in the classic 1981 multirule paper, require a 1:2s violation before other rejection rules are violated. If you had4 values past 1s, but nothing past 2s, it wouldn't be checked. Under more "modern" Westgard Rules, with the 1:2s warning rule abolished, you don't need to wait until the 2s limit line is violated before interp...