Re: [Gnumed-devel] Measurements (was: New developer searching for a task)

[Karsten Hilbert]

> >   I see that this is strongly against the intention of Labs, who
> >   probably claim to be the only ones who know how to judge the things
> >   they measured (and don't publish how they come to that judgement).
> As far as I know labs have a much higher level of quality control as
> single user-maintained devices. Usually labs take part in tests where
> samples of precisely known composition are measured in a lot of labs at
> one time to minimize inter-lab differences (in Germany called
> "Ring-Versuche") and measure the deviation of a single lab. I'm not aware
> of a similiar institution for single devices located at a general
> practitioners office.
Well, usually there's calibration strips for strip analysis
readers (blood glucose etc.) and test solutions for solution
based tests (such as CRP). Other than that the GP is required
to seek re-certification of his medical devices every so
often. Yes, this includes the ergometer bike and the blood
pressure cuff. The overall quality of the outcome isn't as
high as in the Ring-Versuche, though. There's no requirement
to get ISO9001-certified as of yet although there _are_ some
GPs who have done that.

> On the other hand it could be interesting to know what norm was used in
> the process of evaluation a lab result. It might prove useful to store
> this information (e.g. you used a different norm because you suspected a
> certain illness that could be ruled out afterwards).
But then we'd have stored the result of the exclusion test. If
we try to store everything we'll end up duplicating OpenEHR
without taking advantage of it...

Karsten
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