Thirty years of the DICOM standard

Posted on October 9, 2023 By LabLynx Journal articles

In this brief 2023 article published in the journal Tomography, Michele Larobina of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche provides background on "the innovation, advantages, and limitations of adopting DICOM and its possible future directions." After an introduction on the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standard, Larobina then emphasizes the benefits of the standard's approach to handling image metadata, followed by the exchange component of the standard. Larobina then examines the strengths and weaknesses of the DICOM standard, before concluding that DICOM has not only demonstrated "the positive influence and added value that a standard can have in a specific field," but also "encouraged and facilitated data exchange between researchers, creating added value for research." Despite this, "the time is ripe to review some of the initial directives" of DICOM, says Larobina, in order for the the standard to remain relevant going forward.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a new student-centred laboratory training strategy in clinical biochemistry teaching

Posted on October 2, 2023 By Shawn Douglas Journal articles

In this article published in BMC Medical Education, Xu et al. present their four-stage clinical biochemistry teaching methodology which incorporates elements of the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 15189 standard. Noting a lack of student awareness of ISO 15189 Medical laboratories — Requirements for quality and competence and the value its emphasis on quality management brings to laboratories, the authors set upon incorporating the standard into a case-based learning (CBL) approach. After the authors describe the details of their approach and the survey-based results analysis of its outcomes, the authors conclude that outside of improving student outcomes in clinical biochemistry, "ISO 15189 concepts of continuous improvement were implanted, thereby putting the concept of plan–do–check–act (PDCA) into practice, developing recording habits, and improving communication skills."