Posted by Sten Westgard, MS
I'm happy to announce that Concepts and Practices in the Evaluation of Laboratory Methods will again be taught at this year's upcoming AACC/ASCLS conference in Atlanta on Sunday, July 26th.
AACC has divided the workshop (once an entire day) into a morning session and an afternoon session, and this year we will try to make each workshop a standalone session:
In the morning session, Nils Persons, PhD and I will teach Method Verification. This is the shorter, less data intense protocol for method evaluation. Method Verification can cover moderately complex methods and POC devices. Basically, we'll talk about making sure you're selecting the right test (before you even get it in your lab) and then verifying that the product is living up to the label claims.
In the afternoon session, Nils and I will tackle a more complex subject: Method Validation. This involves more studies and applies not only to the usual laboratory methods but also to those exotic Laboratory-Developed Tests (LDTs).
While we will endeavour to make these sessions stand on their own, but honestly, if you're a laboratory manager, you really need to know both techniques. Of those laboratory managers who attend AACC, I'm pretty confident that most of their labs have methods of all types of complexity and need to use both verification studies and validation studies. Attending both will allow you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
This will be the 39th year the workshop has been held, continuing the longest run in the AACC conference's history. The challenges are as fresh today as they were nearly four decades ago, and if anything, it seems like verification and validation are becoming even more important for today's new methods, and particularly for POCs being used "off-label" - thus requiring a full validation study rather than the typical "waived" laxity.
Hope to see you in Atlanta! We'll update this with links to the specific sessions when those are issued.
Comments