The Benefits of Standardisation to Diagnostics
Standardisation of laboratory processes ensures superior quality and efficiency. This is achieved through delivery of comparable, reproducible & reliable results across laboratories in the healthcare system with fewer errors, duplications, delays. Not only does this help to reduce costs, it also improves patient experience and outcomes, as high quality, timely lab results help to improve diagnosis and patient care.1, 2, 3 Furthermore, standardisation helps to improve staff morale as they are using consistent and validated workflows and clinicians can make accurate and timely diagnostic and treatment decisions. In fact, labs today adhere to published standards, guidelines, protocols and quality control systems to drive standardisation within their lab.4,5
The Benefits of Standardisation to Healthcare
Of course, it is not just laboratory processes that are standardised in healthcare, all healthcare processes benefit from standardised so that patients receive consistent quality of care that is aligned with current scientific knowledge, regardless of where they are treated.2, 5, 6 Established evidence-based best practice protocols and standards minimise errors and reduce variation which in turn, enhances safety and reduces the risk of adverse events. Standardisation across healthcare not only impacts patient outcomes within a specific country’s healthcare system but in fact, drives global consistency.2, 6 Global standards e.g. International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), enable best practice and associated improved patient outcomes to be shared internationally.4, 6
It is clear that standardisation plays a critical role in diagnostics and healthcare, helping to ensure consistency, reliability, and improved patient outcomes. But does standardisation block innovation?
Standardisation and innovation in healthcare actually play complementary roles. Whilst standardisation aims to deliver consistency, predictability and reproducibility, innovation is essential to develop new treatments, procedures and diagnostics that improve patient care and outcomes. Both standardisation and innovation work together to advance healthcare.
Standardisation builds the foundations for innovation. The stability of consistent, reliable and predictable evidence-based processes makes it is easier to identify areas for improvement whilst creating capacity for healthcare professionals to explore innovative solutions and enabling them to focus on improving care delivery and patient outcomes. Importantly, standardisation creates a benchmark for comparison to appropriately assess the effectiveness of innovations.
So, standardisation doesn’t block innovation, it allows capacity for modification and improvement, in fact, standardisation enables innovation and innovation enables standardisation.3, 7, 8
Find out more about how BD can help you standardise and innovate your flow cytometry workflows.
