Analysis of test results of an external QC sample can be used as a statistical process control through ongoing measurement of imprecision. When laboratories test the same QC sample in the same assay and submit test results to a single database, the results can be compared and a measure of bias can be calculated. The resulting QC programme can offer detection of unexpected variation in the testing processes and the source of variation investigated.
The control limits, established by this novel method, are based on more than a decade of QC test results from >300 laboratories from 30 countries and provides users of the NRL QC program evidence-based control limits that can be applied in isolation or in conjunction with more traditional methods for establishing control limits.
The rate of failure of QCs using QConnect Limits was more applicable for monitoring infectious disease serology testing compared with UK Public Health, CLSI and RiliBÄK, as the alternatives to QConnect Limits reported an unacceptably high percentage of failures across the 103 data sets.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.