Patient result validation services

Patient result validation is a vital final stage of laboratory quality assurance and is usually the responsibility of senior laboratory staff. Computerised validation systems have recently been introduced to autovalidate data meeting certain pre-defined criteria, thereby allowing senior staff to focus on problematic cases. This article describes the patient results validation service module developed for an advanced instrument workstation in the OpenLabs project. Using knowledge-based techniques, the module provides a range of locally configurable advanced validation procedures (e.g., internal consistency checks, delta checks, and checks for selected specific errors) in addition to the standard reference range and pathological limits checks offered by many laboratory information systems.