THE PERFORMANCE OF THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM VALAB REVISITED - AN EVALUATION AFTER 5 YEARS

In 1988, inundated by the tedious work of validation of laboratory rep orts in a large hospital biochemistry laboratory, we designed VALAB, a knowledge-based system specially dedicated to this iterative function . Coping at first with a few biochemical tests, the program has been p rogressively expanded to forty-five common chemical tests. Simultaneou sly some new rules have been introduced to ''weight'' the conclusion i n different circumstances and rules taking into consideration some cli nical data have also been written.Moreover the program moved to other disciplines, pH and blood gases, haematology and coagulation. Accordin gly the evaluation protocol has been modified, incorporating a new ste p, the consensus decision of the pathologists, operating within the in itial protocol and based upon the various criteria of epidemiology. Th ese major changes and improvements have led us to check and describe a gain the performance of this updated VALAB knowledge-based system.