Laboratory instrument evaluation using a personal computer.

A system in which data from multichannel biochemical analysers is downloaded to a personal computer using a communications package is described. BASIC programs were developed to format the data into a file structure suitable for importing into a commercial statistics software package. This allowed statistical comparisons to be made of patient data obtained from different instruments and facilitated evaluation of these instruments. Using this technique, many hundreds of patient results may be compared without requiring the data to be keyed into a computer. The techniques and programs used are described to show that these facilities can be developed by laboratory scientists with only rudimentary computer programming skills.