Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
There was some very interesting testimony given in front of the US Congress this week. Boeing and other FAA officials discussed their failure to adequately test the lithium-ion batteries found in the 787 Dreamliner. As you probably already know, on two of the Dreamliners, those batteries malfunctioned and caused fires, which then caused the entire fleet to be grounded.
In the New York Times, it was reported "Boeing’s chief engineer on the 787, Mike Sinnett, said the calculation that a battery would fail only once every 10 million flight hours applied to the design of the battery and did not include possible manufacturing flaws."
In fact, two battery failures and serious fires occurred after less than 52,000 flight hours. The risk was actually over 350 times higher than their estimate!
How could they be so wrong? More after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Can you guess which of these categories is the leading source of successful malpractice claims?
- Surgical mishaps
- Obstetrical problems
- Medication errors
- Anesthesia disasters
- Diagnostic errors
- Treatment errors
- Something else entirely?
The answer, after the jump...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
See the latest articles on Westgard Web
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
More evidence of pre-analytical error rates, this time for the Journal of Clinical Pathology. This is from a study back in 2010, my apologies for only finding it this year:
A Six Sigma approach to the rate and clinical effect of registration error in a laboratory, Naadira Vanker, Johan van Wyk, Annalise E. Zemlin, Rajiv T Erasmus, J Clin Pathol 2010:63:434-437.
In this study, they reviewed 47,543 test request forms from a 3 month period of November 2008 to February 2009. The study was conducted at the "chemical pathology laboratory at Tygerberg Hospital - an academic tertiary hospital in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The laboratory is a division of the National Health Laboratory Services, which is a network of 265 pathology laboratories in South Africa."
Can you guess how many errors they found? And what was the impact of those errors?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MLO
In the November 2012 MLO magazine there is an intriguing article by Roy Midyett, a hematology supervisor, titled "Empty QC"
Here's how Mr. Midyett defines "Empty QC":
"Empty QC is any nominal QC that does not give techs performing the test any more confidence than they would have without the QC, and has by logic or experience, no influence on the reporting of the test."
Is Mr. Midyett correct? Have our QC procedures become meaningless gestures? More after the jump.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
I recently got a smart question from a concerned laboratory scientist. After reviewing one of the Sigma-metric studies on the website, he noted that while a particular method had a bad Sigma-metric, the main reason was due to the bias. His question was essentially (and I am paraphrasing here), "If the bias component comes from a particular difference between the instrument or kit and a reference system, shouldn't it be excluded from the Sigma-metric calculation?"
The reasoning is that the bias problem could be (1) eliminated through recalibration, (2) it may be a bias against a method that is not a reference method, so the difference might not be "real", or (3) if the reference range is adjusted and the method is used in exclusion, bias doesn't matter anyway.
We've had a lot of discussion about bias in our statistics lately. Is this a case where the Sigma-metric is "skewed"? What's your verdict? A discussion after the jump.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
During the AACC/ASCLS convention in July, we had a "live" raffle for those who attended the convention, as well as an online raffle, for those who couldn't.
Time to announce the winners...
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
So here's a Normalized Method Decision chart for a cholesterol method.
Which method would you choose?
Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
In the run-up to the AACC/ASCLS conference in Los Angeles, you may have seen a notice about a free book giveaway. For the first 150 people to come to the SeraCare booth at the Laboratory Exposition, they would receive a free book of their choice (from among the three possible titles: Basic QC Practices, Basic Method Validation, and Six Sigma Risk Analysis).
The line to get books, Tuesday Morning of the AACC/ASCLS conference
We expected the event to last the entire day. Do you want to guess how long it actually took before all the books were gone?
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Dr. Westgard had the pleasure of taking part in the Bio-Rad industry workshop on July 17th, which was focused on Quality Control for the Future - Risk Management EP23 for Laboratories.
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Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
As we near the annual AACC/ASCLS convention, it's time for our annual contest to rear its ugly head again: The "Westgard Wear" Raffle:
Our yearly tradition is to offer visitors to our booth a chance to win a piece of "Westgard Wear":
See more details after the jump...