Indirect estimation of reference intervals using first or last results and results from patients without repeated measurements

Abstract

Indirect methods for the estimation of Reference Limits (RLs) use large data pools stored in modern laboratory information’s systems. To avoid correlation between observations repeated results from each patient should be excluded. Some data pools obtained are anonymized, and thereafter the data cannot be re-identified. The effect of the procedure of data selection on the estimations is not investigated yet.

Keywords

• anonymized data
• anonymous data sets
• first/last/all values, non-repeated/repeated populations
• indirect reference limits
• pseudomized data