Autovalidation and automation of the postanalytical phase of routine hematology and coagulation analyses in a university hospital laboratory

Abstract

Automation allowed optimized laboratory workflow for specific patient populations, thereby ensuring standardized results reporting. Autovalidation of test results proved to be an efficient tool for improvement of laboratory work efficacy and TAT.

General position of Croatian medical biochemistry laboratories on autovalidation

“…Therefore, it is important to define exactly how the criteria for delta check rule will be defined. Participants of this survey answered that criteria used for delta check were usually obtained by calculation of RCV, and this is consistent with literature data (2,14,21).…”

“…Once the algorithm is technically set up, decision upon whether all tests or specific test panels will be subject to AV should be made. The results of the survey showed that AV is most commonly applied to routine biochemistry tests, haematology and coagulation tests, and similar results are reported in literature (2,(14)(15)(16)(17). Some studies reported the use of AV for special biochemistry tests, i.e.…”

“…Furthermore, it is necessary to decide which rules will be set in the algorithm, but there are no guidelines that state which rules must be part of an AV algorithm. However, previously published studies report that the most commonly included rules in the AV algorithm are: delta check, AMR, critical val-ues, preanalytical and analytical flags from analysers, interference indices and quality control results (5,11,(13)(14)(15)19,20). In this survey, participants stated that the most commonly used rules are AMR, critical values, flags from analyser, delta check and interference indices.…”

“…Most participants answered that validation was performed on less than 500 samples. However, data about the number of samples included in the validation process is inconsistent throughout literature (2,14,17). Since there are no guidelines for the number of samples required for validation, Working Group for Post-analytics of the CSMBLM recommends that each laboratory decides on how many samples will be included in the validation, depending on the number of patients/ samples in the laboratory and test panel included in AV (3).…”

Benchmarking diagnostic laboratory performance: Survey results for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

“…Indeed, strengths of humans and computers might be augmented, and weaknesses be offset by each other thus allowing for safe services in high-throughput environments [ 29 , 30 ]. In this sense, not yet widely used autovalidation has the potential to significantly improve on patient safety by more specifically targeting human attention [ 31 , 32 ].…”