Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
It's that time of year again, when the annual Quality in the Spotlight Conference is held in Antwerp, Belgium. This is an intimate gathering, one that doesn't drown you in panels, symposiums, and roundtables. You never have to worry that you're missing one talk while attending another. It's also one of the few meetings that actually focuses on the quality of testing.
Dr. Westgard gives his lecture at the Elzenveld conference center in downtown Antwerp.
As the audience sat in the spacious hall, Dr. Westgard gave an introduction to the realm of Risk Analysis, an approach that is coming soon to the US via CLSI documents. Even though the origin of many of the CLSI guidelines (EP18, EP23) can be found in ISO standards (22367, 14971), the medical laboratory community in Europe is not wholly familiar with these concepts, either.
Dr. Sharon Ehrmeyer and Dr. Westgard (in a wine cellar) at the conference dinner.
One of the highlights of the conference is the dinner and reception that follow the scientific presentations. Unlike the mega-meetings, it's possible to meet and make connections with all of the presenters and attendees to this conference. The connections and conversations that result are almost as useful as the scientific program of the meeting.
This year's "Westgard Award" went to Dr. George Klee of the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Klee has been doing the most prominent work in the field of setting quality specifications, including a paper in Clinical Chemistry updating the usefulness of different types of quality requirements, and a focused study he conducted with thousands of patient records to determine the medical use of glucose test results (reinforcing the need to set a tighter quality requirement for glucose methods, down to 15% or even 10% from the current 20% goal). It was really useful to see Dr. Klee talk at length about these papers and his approach to quality specifications.
Here, at the close of the conference, Dr. Per Hyltoft-Petersen and Dr. Westgard discuss the next meeting.
The Quality in the Spotlight conference has been going for 15 years now, quite an achievement. Even as the discussions of this conference were unfolding, the planning for the 16th conference is underway.
Finally, a trip to Belgium without sampling the beer is a crime. Here, "the" Westgard and "a" Westgard enjoy a drink following the end of the conference.
Next year, the 16th conference will be held on March 29th and 30th. The central theme will be:
Error Budgets and Risk Management for Laboratory Medicine.
Hope to see you there in 2012!
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