Need for improved instrument and kit evaluations.

A review of method comparison studies published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology indicates that hematology evaluations are less rigorous than their chemistry counterparts and rely heavily on the correlation coefficient. While clinical chemistry evaluations depend more on linear regression, they tend to omit relevant, lesser-known statistics, such as the standard error of the estimate. The authors reiterate guidelines for the collection and statistical analysis of method comparison data and recommend that both hematology and chemistry evaluations be improved.