Efficacy of a home made quality control serum

With increasing automation in Clinical Laboratories, the requirements for quality control material have greatly increased in order to monitor performance. The constant use of commercial control material is not economically feasible for many countries because of non-availability or the high cost of these materials. Here we describe a simple technique to prepare Home Made Quality Control serum using blood from polycythaemic patients. This preparation is stable for about six months without any alterations in the concentration of any of the chemical constituents. Extensive use of Home Made Quality Control sera in our laboratories have saved about 69% of the amount spent on the commercial material without any compromise in quality of the laboratory performance.