Automated analysis in clinical chemistry
| Autor: | Ralph E. Thiers |
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| Rok vydání: | 1978 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Pure and Applied Chemistry. 50:375-383 |
| ISSN: | 1365-3075 0033-4545 |
| DOI: | 10.1351/pac197850050375 |
| Popis: | In only two decades the analytical processes in clinical chemistry laboratories have utterly changed from manual to mechanized. Continuous-flow analysis initiated the change, followed by discrete automation, automatic particle counting, kinetic analysis, chromatography and, most recently, radioimmunoassay. Today's automated processes pour out large amounts of data. In fact, with some modern machines it is easier to discard selected unwanted data on chosen samples than it is to omit the part of the analytical process that produces it. This change has totally inverted the order of difficulty of the various routine tasks in the laboratory. In the old order, performance of the analytical process outweighed the total effort for all other tasks. In the new order, data handling, in its broadest sense, outweighs all other tasks. As a result, significant problems for the laboratory involve extra-laboratory factors to a new and major extent, ranging from exact identification of specimens to proper use of reported data. Automated identification of specimens, from collection to report, will come rapidly as new devices are developed and accepted by clinical technicians. Appropriate end-use of freely available laboratory data poses a much more difficult challenge, as yet unmet. Before the advances brought about by automation are fully utilized major changes may be required in the approach of laboratorian and clinician alike to the proper role of the laboratory in the practice of medicine. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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