PATIENT RESULT VALIDATION SERVICES

Patient result validation is a vital final stage of laboratory quality assurance and is usually the responsibility of senior laboratory staf f. Computerised validation systems have recently been introduced to au tovalidate data meeting certain pre-defined criteria, thereby allowing senior staff ro focus on problematic cases, This article describes th e patient results validation service module developed for an advanced instrument workstation in the OpenLabs project, Using knowledge-based techniques, the module provides a range of locally configurable advanc ed validation procedures (e.g., internal consistency checks, delta che cks, and checks for selected specific errors) in addition to the stand ard reference range and pathological limits checks offered by many lab oratory information systems.