Various Methods Allow Clinical Laboratories to Maximize Their Efficiency and Usefulness
The delineation of a brain-to-brain loop in clinical laboratory testing first published in 1981 has never been more pertinent. Its subsequent development and current application in clinical molecular oncology in 2016 can make all the difference.
This discussion focuses on the factors that drive the ordering of a lab test and the many components thereof, itemizes pre- and post-analytic causes of diagnostic error, and recommends how a laboratory can help ensure the usefulness of the entire process.
Just as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, a loop that isn’t closed is (obviously) still open.
Technical and laboratory workers tend naturally to define their work by their technical products and procedures, as well they should. In clinical laboratory testing, that tends to be the step called “analysis.”
The success or failure of an “analysis” may well depend upon the pre- and post-analytic phases at least as much as the analysis itself.
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