What is Data Provenance & Why is it Important in the Clinical Diagnostics Space?
In clinical diagnostics labs, there’s a pressing need for data provenance—tracing the origin and changes over time of critical data such as electronic health records, analytical results, and workflow records.
Data in laboratories is often produced by separate information systems, which can make it difficult to trace. When the systems aren’t connected, it can be even more challenging to maintain the data’s chain of custody and the metadata records.
The result? Stakeholders can’t generate a report that describes exactly what happened to a sample, such as which agents and activities were involved, and at what times. This information about the data—the metadata—provides granular details that might have been collected in a notebook or file previously.
For example, in order for a lab to produce a full provenance record on a measured volume, they need to prove how they know that a certain volume was measured.
