Tools, Technologies and Training for Healthcare Laboratories

Links to Spain

November 2006

Dr. Westgard recently attended the Spanish society of Clinical Chemistry and Chemical Pathology in Bilbao, Spain. Here are a few highlights.

In October, I had the privilege of participating in the meeting of the Spanish Society of Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Pathology. This meeting was held in Bilbao, the home of the famous Guggenheim museum that was designed by Frank Gehry. If quality means surpassing customer expectations, the museum and the city of Bilbao were truly quality experiences. I tried to capture a picture of the museum, but it is too overwhelming to be contained in any single view.

Back to business - my presentation was about Six Sigma applications for quality assessment of laboratory testing. This includes the use of Six Sigma criteria for judging the acceptability of methods during method validation studies, Six Sigma metrics for selection of QC procedures, and Six Sigma metrics for estimation of quality from proficiency testing results.

My dear friend Dr. Carmen Ricos chaired the session and has also translated my slides to make them available to our Spanish audience.

To download the Westgard presentation at Bilbao, fill out the form below...

Thos who regularly follow Westgard Web will recognize Dr. Ricos as a contributor to our website. On behalf of the Analytical Quality Commission of the Spanish Society for Clinical Chemistry and Molecular Pathology [http://www.seqc.es/], she chairs a group that maintains a database on biologic variation, which can be found on Westgard Web.

For participants at the conference, I promised to provide a list of some reference materials available on Westgard Web.

Many thanks to Bio-Rad for supporting my participation in this meeting, and again, to Dr. Carmen Ricos, for making available the translation of my slides.

Again, many thanks to my hosts and the attentive audience.


James O. Westgard, PhD, is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison. He also is president of Westgard QC, Inc., (Madison, Wis.) which provides tools, technology, and training for laboratory quality management.