Approaches used to monitor the performance of infectious disease testing have been debated recently. 1 Traditional quality control methods such as Westgard rules are commonly applied but alternatives such as sigma metrics or using historical data have been proposed. The application of traditional methods has been demonstrated to cause an unacceptable level of false rejections. 2 This workshop seeks to outline the differences between clinical chemistry and infectious disease testing, highlighting the reasons why applying traditional methods is not fit for purpose for infectious disease testing. As a leading authority on the standardisation and control of infectious diseases, this workshop will use interactive audience participation, case studies and polling to create a better understanding of the principles of infectious disease monitoring, the regulatory requirements, and alternative approaches available.
Dimech et al. (Sun,) studied this question.