Journal Information
Journal ID (publisher-id): BM
Journal ID (nlm-ta): Biochem Med (Zagreb)
Title: Biochemia Medica
Abbreviated Title: Biochem. Med. (Zagreb)
ISSN (print): 1330-0962
ISSN (electronic): 1846-7482
Publisher: Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine
Article Information
Copyright statement: ©Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine.
Copyright: 2020, Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry
License (open-access):
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date received: 12 September 2019
Date accepted: 29 January 2020
Publication date (electronic): 15 April 2020
Publication date (print): 15 June 2020
Volume: 30
Issue: 2
Electronic Location Identifier: 020702
Publisher ID: bm-30-2-020702
DOI: 10.11613/BM.2020.020702
General position of Croatian medical biochemistry laboratories on autovalidation: survey of the Working Group for Post-analytics of the Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine
[1] Working Group for Post-analytics, Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia
[2] Department of Transfusion Medicine and Transplantation Biology, University Hospital Centre Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
[3] Department of Medical Biochemistry, Haematology and Coagulation with Cytology, University Hospital for Infectious Diseases “Dr. Fran Mihaljević”, Zagreb, Croatia
[4] Medical Biochemistry Laboratory, General Hospital “Dr. Tomislav Bardek”, Koprivnica, Croatia
[5] Department of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine, General Hospital Pula, Pula, Croatia
[6] Department of Laboratory Diagnostics, Children’s Hospital Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
[7] Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CROQALM), Zagreb, Croatia
Author notes:
[*] Corresponding author: kutnjakvl@gmail.com
Introduction
Autovalidation (AV) is an algorithm based on predefined rules designed, among others, to automate and standardize the postanalytical phase of laboratory work. The aim of this study was to examine the overall opinion of Croatian medical biochemistry laboratories regarding various aspects of AV.
Material and methods
This retrospective study is an analysis of the responses of a survey about AV comprised of 18 questions, as part of Module 10 (“Postanalytical phase of laboratory testing”) of national External Quality Assessment program, administered by the Croatian Centre for Quality Assessment in Laboratory Medicine. Results were reported as percentages of total number of participants in survey or as proportions of observed data if the overall number of data was <100.
Results
121 laboratories responded to the survey, of which 76% do not use AV, while 11% of laboratories use AV in routine laboratory work. 16/29 laboratories implemented semi-automated AV for general biochemistry (7/29), haematology (5/29), and coagulation (4/29) tests. Analytical measurement ranges, critical values, flags from analysers, interference indices and delta check were the most commonly used rules in the algorithm. 12/29 laboratories performed validation of AV with less than 500 samples (8/29). 7/13 laboratories report the percentage of AV being 20-50%, while 10/13 answered that introduction of AV significantly reduced turnaround time (TAT) (for 20 - 25%), especially for biochemistry tests.
Keywords: postanalytical phase; autovalidation; clinical laboratory; questionnaire
