| Sumario: | A pilot study was conducted using the Microsoft Access database program to determine whether it was possible to use a readily available commercial software package to generate reference intervals from the databases available at Auckland Healthcare. This involved combining the information held on the laboratory's database with the ICD-coded diagnoses on the discharge database and using a list of excluding diagnoses for a particular analyte to screen the raw laboratory results. As a result of this screening a 'cleaned' population of reference individuals was generated who were considered suitable as a reference sample group from which could be determined a reference interval for that analyte for on-admission hospital patients. The two analytes which were trialled were serum calcium and serum phosphate and the reference intervals which were obtained were comparable with those currently in use at Auckland Healthcare. it is suggested that this pilot study has shown that it is possible to use the Access program for this task, that the reference intervals generated in this way have possible practical applications and can be argued to have scientific validity. More work needs to be done on a further series of analytes however, before these reference intervals will gain clinical acceptance. An important advantage of this procedure is the minimal cost in comparison to full-scale reference interval studies, and the infinitely repeatable nature of the operation. There is also interesting potential for generating ethnicity-based reference intervals.
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