Efforts towards total laboratory automation have tended to focus on the mechanical or physical steps in the laboratory testing process. Improved information management is also a natural part of this effort, however, there has been little improvement and little automation of the laboratory's quality systems.
With the QC planning tools and technology developed by Westgard QC, there now is an opportunity to automate the QC process. An automated QC process would allow a user (manufacturer or laboratory) to select the desired level of analytical quality, rather than trying to select appropriate statistical rules. Westgard QC's patented automatic QC process would select and implement the appropriate statistical QC procedure (control rules, Ns) to assure the desired level of quality is achieved.
This automatic QC process could reside in a laboratory process controller, a laboratory information system, a computer workstation, or within an analytical instrument. A prototype program (QC Validator 3.0) has been developed to demonstrate an advanced quality management system that integrates method validation, automatic QC selection, and QC charting and flagging into a single package.
The technical training that will be needed by industry and laboratory personnel can be supported by the Internet training materials and courses available on Westgard Web.