Precision in Practice: Using Metrics to Elevate Laboratory Quality
Now available to watch on-demand.
Discover how leveraging available data and tools can significantly enhance your lab's efficiency by reducing unnecessary materials, time, and effort. By gaining a deep understanding of assay performance and making informed decisions about allowable variations, you can streamline workflows and align your quality management with risk-based, patient focused regulatory guidelines.
This session addresses the challenges associated with multianalyzer systems, the critical role of robust QC practices, and the practical application of total allowable error and sigma metrics. You’ll also explore actionable guidelines for lot-to-lot comparisons and learn how to utilize automated tools to streamline and improve QC processes. Apply these theoretical concepts pragmatically to elevate laboratory practices to ensure accurate, reliable test results.
Key Topics:
- Analyzer concordance: Practical strategies for managing multiple analyzers within a single lab or across networks. Learn to set realistic performance expectations and conduct effective intra-lab comparisons to optimize assay consistency.
- Quality control frequency: Understand QC frequency from a risk management perspective. Discover how to select appropriate QC rules and frequencies, and apply standardized rules and targets consistently across analyzers.
- New reagent lot management: Best practices for lot-to-lot comparison. Learn when additional testing on new reagent lots is necessary and when it can be avoided to conserve resources without compromising quality.
We’ll also explore the role of automation in QC processes, including scheduling QC checks based on patient sample volumes and utilizing built-in evaluation tools for assay performance studies. Leveraging these automated features can help your lab stay ahead of evolving best practices and regulatory requirements while improving overall operational efficiency.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Understand the difficulties laboratories face in balancing increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for risk-based quality management with the reality of tightening budgets and resource constraints.
- Recognize how detailed knowledge of assay performance metrics supports the development of quality assurance programs that are sustainable, practical, and aligned with real-world lab operations.
- Learn strategies to effectively manage analyzer concordance, determine optimal QC frequency, and assess new reagent lots by utilizing advanced, built-in analyzer technologies and automated tools.
Who Should Attend?
Healthcare professionals, clinical staff, lab technicians, pathologists, lab directors, quality manager, laboratorians, researchers and academics.
Presenters
Dr. Nils B. Person
Ph.D., FACB, FAACC
Clinical Chemist, Retired
Dr. Mark Borgman
Medical Sciences Partner
Siemens Healthineers
Sarah Thomas
Associate Editor
SelectScience