[Laboratory testing virtually centralized to benefit both patients and drug research]

Laboratory analyses in multicentre safety studies of new drugs usually are performed in central laboratories outside the Netherlands. Patient care requires local (hospital) laboratory tests. In the so-called Virtually Centralized Laboratory the Dutch local laboratories report their results after data communication and data transformation in such a way that they seem to form one laboratory. The local analytical results are transformed by calibrating the local methods using standard preparations, thus reducing the inter laboratory variation. This concept may lead to one set of national reference values for all general clinical chemical and haematological laboratory tests.