Establishing and evaluating an auto-verification system of thalassemia gene detection results

The manual verification of gene tests is time-consuming and error prone. In this study, we try to explore a high-efficiency, clinically useful auto-verification system for gene detection of thalassemia. A series of verification elements were rooted in the auto-verification system. Consistency check was applied initially as one of the essential elements in our study. One hundred twenty-four archived cases were used to choose the consistency-check rules' indices from routine blood examination and hemoglobin electrophoresis by the receiver operating characteristic curves. Rule 1 and rule 2 established by the chosen indices were compared by their passing rate, consistency with manual validation, and error rate. Finally, 748 cases were used for verifying the system's feasibility by evaluating the passing rate, turn-around time (TAT), and error rate. The rule 2 had a higher passing rate (67.7% vs. 50.8%) and consistency (0.623 vs. 0.364) than the rule 1 with an error rate of zero. In a "live" valuation, the auto-verification system can reduce the TAT and error rate of verification by 51.5% and 0.13%, respectively, with a high passing rate of 82.8%. The auto-verification system for gene detection of thalassemia in this study can shorten the validation time, reduce errors, and enhance efficiency.