Case Study

The KENAS H&S Team publish a paper on ISO 15189 implementation in Kenya

During the 25th Annual Scientific and Exhibition Conference for the Association of Kenya Medical Laboratory Scientific Officers (AKMLSO), the KENAS Health and Safety team published a paper titled: Comparison of Measurement Uncertainty Values across Clinical Chemistry Laboratories in Kenya.

Robert Njuguna, Case Officer, Health and Safety at KENAS and James Sakwa of MMUST did research on 10 laboratories that were implementing ISO 15189:2012 in Kenya. KENAS accredits medical laboratories to this Standard. In the research, they reviewed the laboratories’ measurement of uncertainty data. These labs were selected on the basis of accuracy and completeness of their data. The tests included were salt, potassium, glucose, cholesterol, calcium, total protein, urea, bilirubin, albumin, and creatinine.

The background of the research touches on laboratory results being expressed as single value when in actual sense represent a dispersion of values attributed to the measurement as a result of inherent random variation in the test method. Measurement uncertainty characterizes the dispersion of values therefore true value of measurement is unknown at the time of releasing results.