A data processing system adapted to the special needs of the emergency laboratory.

Abstract

The number of emergency tests in clinical laboratories has increased. Now, in some laboratories 25% of all routine analyses are requested as emergencies.' In spite of the impact for patient care, workload and internal laboratory organisation, reports about this important facet are scanty. 1-8Many factors contribute to excess use of the chemical laboratory.9 In the case of emergency tests, requests arise from the proportion of high-intensity care beds in large university hospitals, the advent of new parameters, medicolegal considerations, inadequate knowledge of test characteristics by the physician responsible for requesting, and intrinsic difficulties of centralised laboratories in handling nonroutine samples. Until recently, large capacity analysers have been inappropriate for processing single specimens with only a few tests. In addition the