background and objectives: laboratory reference values are an important tool for clinical management of patients. reference values being used in most laboratories in iran have been provided from the established reference values from developed countries. however, several variables can affect on these laboratory parameters. therefore, this study was carried out to establish the reference values o...

Australia conducts clinical surveillance for cases of polio-like illness in children in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended surveillance criteria for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP). AFP cases are ascertained either by clinicians notifying the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit or designated nurses enrolling cases as part of the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease ...

INTRODUCTION The European Regional Office of the World Health Organization developed a strategic approach to stop the indigenous transmission of measles in its 53 Member States by 2015. In Italy, laboratory surveillance activity is implemented by the National Reference Laboratory for Measles and Rubella at the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome). The role o...

A commercial hardness testing machine was provided to represent a hardness reference standard in Slovenia. In order to evaluate how accurate the hardness scales realised with this machine could be, the main influence factors contributing to the uncertainties were verified and comparative measurements carried out, the results of which were compared with several laboratories owning primary hardne...

Two projects explored the links between language use and aging. In the first project, written or spoken text samples from disclosure studies from over 3,000 research participants from 45 different studies representing 21 laboratories in 3 countries were analyzed to determine how people change in their use of 14 text dimensions as a function of age. A separate project analyzed the collected work...

In laboratory medicine, meaningful measurements are essential for the diagnosis, risk assessment, treatment, and follow-up of patients; therefore, methods applied in diagnostic measurements must be accurate, precise, specific, and comparable among laboratories (1 ). A given analytical measurement has only one true result, and the reliability of a measurement lies both in the result obtained and...

Recent decades have witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of new diagnostic methods and the introduction of many emerging new biomarkers in clinical diagnostic laboratories. The utility of biomarkers as screening and diagnostic tools is limited by many factors, such as sensitivity, specificity and predictive values. Another critical factor, not always carefully considered, is the availa...

The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System Laboratories serve 15 hospitals and affiliated regional physician practices in the New York City metropolitan area, with virus testing performed at a central reference laboratory. The influenza A pandemic (H1N1) 2009 outbreak began in this area on April 24, 2009, and within weeks respiratory virus testing increased 7.5 times. In response, laborat...