Development of an internal dynamic web site to promote quality assurance in a clinical laboratory

In clinical laboratories, one challenging quality assurance objective is to maintain standardized practices. Meeting this objective entails ensuring information flow, which is necessary to smooth running of the laboratory. To facilitate information flow, we developed an internal quality Web site on our local network. The dynamic generated pages of the site were constructed with EasyPHP v.1.6, a complete freeware package providing PHP dynamic language and databases. The site comprises various sections: general news, specific laboratory units news, documents (quality manual, guidelines, emergency processes), schedules, National Quality Control results, forum, etc. Five to 10 pages are updated each week. This work was facilitated by the use of PHP-written pages and data tables, which enable us to record in real time the operation of our assurance quality project and to improve traceability. This approach could be extended to other aspects of quality management and could help meet the future IS015189 standard requirements.