Secondary Use of Laboratory data: Potentialities and Limitations

Abstract

Clinical databases have been developed in recent years especially during the course of all medical concerns including laboratory results. The information produced by the diagnostic laboratories have great impact on health care system with various secondary uses. These uses are sometimes as publishing new extracted information of laboratory reports which have been widely applied in the scientific journals. Nowadays, some large scale or national databases are also formed from the integration of these data from smaller centers in the field of human health in many countries. These databases are beneficial for different stakeholders who may need this information. Unfortunately, reviewing some of these uses has indicated lots of errors in quality control, test validity, uniformity and so on. More importantly, some of the diagnostic procedures have been applied in the clinical diagnostic laboratories without even preliminary clinical evaluation studies. Therefore, any taken conclusion from these analyzed data may not be reliable. This use requires checking the several specifications that have been notified in this study. Current review also intends to show how the correct information should be to extract for the scientific reports, or integrated in large scale databases.

Comment on “Upgrading the Iranian National Laboratory Standard to Conform to ISO 15189:2012”

“…External quality assessment and proficiency testing have been applying as an integral part of laboratory quality assurance. This process establishes harmonizing and standardizing at all laboratory processes [4]. It is the best practice for laboratory tests, and allows assessing diagnosis quality and accuracy.…”

“…The main reasons are existence of more than 6000 laboratories in Iran, lack of sufficient auditors and frequently changing of laboratory staff and auditors leads to individual experiences are not transferred correctly. We are still facing with frequently reports on unreliability results [4,5]. It seems all influential parameters must be carefully evaluated through independent studies and scientific investigations.…”