The Westgard Rules

What's the Q of D? 2012 update

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

In the recent issue of Clinical Chemistry, an editorial reviews the current state of Vitamin D testing: "There is common agreement that 25-OHD is a 'difficult' analyte."

25-Hydroxyvitamin D: A Difficult Analyte, Graham D. Carter, Clin Chem 58:3; 486-488 (2012).

At the same time, the editorial notes that marked process is being made:

"Nevertheless, results submitted to the international Vitamin D External Quality Assessment (DEQAS) have shown a gradual reduction in interlaboratory imprecision (CV) in recent years - from >30% in 1995 to 15% in 2011."

The question is, is that reduction in imprecision good enough? Or is the quality required by Vitamin D still too "difficult"?

More after the jump...

Pop Quiz: What's an IQCP?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Heads up. There's a new abbreviation in town: IQCP

Can you guess what IQCP means?

1. Information Quality Certified Professional
2. Individualized Quality Control Plan
3. Intelligent Quality Control Plan
4. Incoherent Quality Control Plan
5. Ill-conceived Quality Control Plan

The answer, after the jump...

25,000

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Just a few weeks ago we hit a major milestone for the website.

25,000 members.

In less than three years, more than 25,000 laboratory professionals have joined the website as (free) members. That's backed up by some even more impressive stats on the website:

In 2011, we had more than

• 300,000 unique visitors
• 600,000 visits to the website
• 2,500,000 million pages/articles viewed by visitors.

I say "more" because these figures actually exclude traffic to the blog, to the online store, to the online graphing tools and to the course portal. These figures also exclude the traffic by non-humans (i.e. search engine robots). These numbers are just traffic from real people on the main section of westgard.com.

For a website devoted to laboratory quality control, these are pretty big numbers. It's unlikely we will ever reach the stats of the big websites like Google (or AACC), because we continue to focus on a specific niche of the laboratory. But as niches go, this one just keeps getting bigger.

First of all, we want to Thank You, the visitors and members and interested laboratory professionals. We wouldn't have this traffic unless you were interested in the materials we publish.Thank you for your interest in quality. Thank you for your questions - which help to inspire and direct our future efforts. Thank you, too, for those of you who have contributed guest essays and data and other articles. And a very special thank you to our customers, whose patronage supports the website. If we didn't have paying customers, westgard.com wouldn't be able to continue to exist.

The website continues to grow, expand, and improve in content. Our goal is still the same as when we launched the website back more than 15 years ago: to be a source of tools, training and technology for laboratory professionals.

As a way of saying thanks, here's a special discount we'll run from now until [now extended to APRIL 25th, 2012]: 25% off any order through westgard.com. It's one of our biggest discounts we've ever run, to celebrate the biggest milestone we've just reached.

Use the coupon at westgard.com:  25THANKS

[The fine print: online coupon good from now until APRIL 25th, 2012. Cannot be combined with other offers. One coupon per customer only. Applies only on westgard.com.]