Safety assessment of data management in a clinical laboratory

This paper briefly reviews work undertaken within the DTI-sponsored MORSE project. The Clinical Biochemistry Department of the West Middlesex University Hospital, one of the five project partners, provides clinical and laboratory services to a wide range of users. The Laboratory Information Management System used within the department has been developed using a range of commercially available hardware and software together with software that has been designed and developed within the laboratory. This paper reports on the first stages of safety analysis of the overall operations in the laboratory. This is a pre-cursor to the systematic re-development of the information system in the light of the findings of the safety analysis.