Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

We want your control chart data!

We've always had an "open door" policy on the website, welcoming your questions and your data. At times, we may not be so explicit in inviting you to contact us with your observations, comments, inquiries, and frustrations, but we do want to hear from you.

Now, we're asking for a more specific set of data from you - for your problem methods, show us a few months of QC data, ideally with notations such as new control lot, new reagent, recalibration, etc.

Posted by Sten Westgard

This month, Dr. Westgard was teaching his spring semester class for the University of Wisconsin Medical Technology school. He likes to use recently published papers in the scientific literature as a way to relate his lessons to things happening in the "real world" of the laboratory.

This semester, he has written up a number of lessons covering HbA1c methods, performance, and quality requirements based on the article in Clinical Chemistry, Few Point-of-Care Hemoglobin A1c Assay Methods Meet Clinical Needs, by David E. Bruns1 and James C. Boyd and a study by Lenters-Westra and Slingerland (Six out of eight hemoglobin A1c point-of care instruments do not meet the generally accepted analytical performance criteria. Clin Chem 2010;56:44 –52.)

For your convenience, here are the lessons in order...

By Sten Westgard, MS

One of the highlights for me of the AACC convention in Washington, DC, was my inclusion in a poster that analyzed the method performance of the Abbott Architect c8000. I'm pictured here with fellow authors (left to right) Gene Osikowicz, Charles Wilson, and John Baker (lead author). They deserve most of the credit for the work of collecting the data.

The poster can be viewed here and the QC application on Westgard Web can be viewed here. -----