AUTOMATED TECHNICAL VALIDATION - A REAL-TIME EXPERT-SYSTEM FOR DECISION-SUPPORT

Dealing daily with various machines and various control specimens prov ides a lot of data that cannot be processed manually. In order to help decision-making we wrote specific software coping with the traditiona l QC, with patient data (mean of normals, delta check) and with criter ia related to the analytical equipment (flags and alarms). Four machin es (3 Ektachem 700 and 1 Hitachi 911) analysing 25 common chemical tes ts are controlled. Every day, three different control specimens and on e more once a week (regional survey) are run on the various pieces of equipment. The data are collected on a 486 microcomputer connected to the central computer. For every parameter the standard deviation is co mpared with the published acceptable limits and the Westgard's rules a re computed. The mean of normals is continuously monitored. The final decision induces either an alarm sound and the print-out of the cause of rejection or, if no alarms happen, the daily print-out of recorded data, with or without the Levey Jennings graphs.