Minute from meeting Odense, 1-2. Dec. 2000 

Present: Per Hyltoft Petersen, Ari Lahti, Nils Jørgensen (1. Dec), Pål Rustad

Per wished all welcome and Pål gave a brief summary of status of the project focussing on data registration program.

Preparation of data for calculation of reference intervals

Nils Jørgensen have most kindly agreed to take care of the data sent in by the laboratories, arrange the data in a data base, and make evaluation of the quality of data considering both analytical and biological aspects.

Analytical quality should be based on biological variation, we discussed limits based on optimum, desirable or minimum requirements, but agreed that general requirements was difficult to state now, we have to look at the data.

Criteria for excluding all data for a reference person was suggested by Per as: 1 result outside 4 s, or 2 outside 3 s (s is standard deviation of reference value distribution).

Ari Lahti’s stay in Odense

Ari Lahti plans to stay in Odense for 3 months (from May/June?) co-operating with Per HP to calculate reference intervals. Application for money support for the stay was discussed on Saturday.

Response to laboratory

Decided that laboratories shall get one report including:

• their data compared to other laboratories
• recommended reference ranges
• is quality of laboratory’s data sufficient for using unmodified recommended reference range

Decided that evaluation of analytical quality should be based on necessary quality requirements for sharing reference intervals based on an expression including both bias and imprecision. Relative bias is calculated using Mcal/TVcal –1, imprecision as the combined imprecision for all replicates of control materials (within series precision) multiplied by a factor (1.4?) as an estimate of possible between series components. Decided to use Malmö reference ranges for calculating total biological variation (reference range/4) as Ricos’ data are based on few reference persons.

Partition of reference ranges

Discussion on how to partition reference values according to a continuous scale (i.e. age) and to a categorical scale (i.e. gender). Veli Kairisto and his group have described a procedure for calculating confidence intervals for continuous reference ranges. Per HP have used quality goals based on biological variation (optimum, desirable, minimum requirements) to set criteria for making separate reference intervals for categorical scale. Recommendations on partition of reference intervals are to be published in a couple of articles, and Ari an Per will work to make criteria for both continuous and categorical separations based on the same ideas (quality goals based on biological variation).

Publication of results

The results should be published in SJCLI in a special issue. Pål has the responsibility to make a plan for the content and contact the persons to be responsible for each section/article.

Nordic Congress in Clinical Chemistry 2002, Reykjavik.

Discussed possibility for arranging a 2 days workshop in connection with NORIP project:

1. day: Presentation of results
2. day: What next?
	How to use CAL and X?
	How to present data on internet?
	Bio bank – how should it be used?
	Haematology?
	Immunology?

Pål contacts Leifur Franzson for arrangements.

 

Pål Rustad

24/1-01