Designing and Validating Autoverification Rules for Hematology Analysis in Sysmex XN-9000 Hematology System

Hematology analysis is a common test among patients in hospital. However, manual verification of hematology analysis is time consuming and tedious, with variation between inter-individual laboratory workers. This study was to establish and validate a set of autoverification rules for hematology analysis in the department of laboratory medicine, Zhongshan Hospital of Sun Yatsen University.

Hematology analysis was measured by a Sysmex XN-9000 hematology system in the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Zhongshan Hospital of Sun Yatsen University. SYSMEX Laboman EasyAccess 6.0 and the laboratory information system were used to construct the algorithm and design the autoverification rules of hematology analysis according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute document Auto 10A and 41 rules of Hematology Review Criteria. The laboratory turnaround time (TAT), autoverification pass rates, false positive, false negative, and the average error rate were verified after implementing autoverification rules.

Approximate 1,300 specimens were collected daily and transferred to our laboratory for hematology analysis; that is necessary to build a database and to design autoverification rules. The average autoverification passing rate was 81%; the false positive rate was 13.6%; the false negative rate and the average error rate was nearly zero, indicating that incorrect reports were almost eliminated. Moreover, since implementing autoverification, the TAT was reduced by 27.0% in in-patient reports, by 21.9% in out-patient reports, and by 39.0% in emergency reports, which enhanced the productivity in our laboratory.

Our laboratory accelerated verification and decreased TAT and the odds of human review errors in the released results since implementing the autoverification. Thus, we can save more time and concentrate on verifying the abnormal results and processing emergency tests.