Shen Steven, Yoon Ju-Yoon
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Anatomic Pathology, St. Michael's Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
J Pathol Inform. 2025 Mar 3;17:100434. doi: 10.1016/j.jpi.2025.100434. eCollection 2025 Apr.
The practice of modern-day laboratory medicine entails extensive, daily practice of tracking various quality metrics of every molecular test to ensure quality maintenance, as well as for laboratory management. While various third-party tools are commercially available, such represent a significant investment for publicly funded institutions. To automate aspects of this quality management, we developed a custom dashboard, written using R. We used R Studio, a freely available software, and employed the and packages to develop the code base for the dashboard. Data for the dashboard were pulled from multiple Excel tracking spreadsheets for different clinical assays. The current dashboard allows for dynamic, automated reporting of case volume, and turn-around time, which are regularly reported metrics to CancerCare Ontario for reimbursement purposes. Workload tracking is also made possible, automating calculations regularly performed for billing purposes. The dashboard summarizes various quality metrics for each assay in a single table, viewable by multiple personnel within a single network. Additional features such as filtering quality metrics by date and customization of a variety of plots were also included. Whereas other informatics solutions may be available, our custom solution represents a low-cost system that alleviates a significant workload from various members of the laboratory medicine department, easing the currently significant administrative burden from the "hands-on" staff. Future work will be focused on further improving the accessibility of the dashboard and the integration of additional molecular assays for quality monitoring.
现代实验室医学实践需要每天广泛跟踪每项分子检测的各种质量指标，以确保质量维持以及用于实验室管理。虽然有各种第三方工具可供商业使用，但对于公共资助机构来说，这是一笔巨大的投资。为了实现质量管理的自动化，我们使用R语言开发了一个定制的仪表板。我们使用免费软件R Studio，并使用 和 包来开发仪表板的代码库。仪表板的数据从不同临床检测的多个Excel跟踪电子表格中提取。当前的仪表板允许动态、自动报告病例数量和周转时间，这些是安大略省癌症关爱中心为报销目的定期报告的指标。工作量跟踪也成为可能，实现了为计费目的定期进行的计算自动化。仪表板在一个表格中汇总了每项检测的各种质量指标，同一网络内的多名人员均可查看。还包括按日期过滤质量指标和定制各种图表等其他功能。虽然可能有其他信息学解决方案，但我们的定制解决方案是一个低成本系统，减轻了实验室医学部门各成员的大量工作量，减轻了目前“实际操作”人员的巨大行政负担。未来的工作将集中在进一步提高仪表板的可访问性以及整合更多分子检测以进行质量监测。
