Latest blogs

• Issues with reference ranges – Part 1

  24 Oct, 2019

  As the OpenPathology project has progressed, we have started to build measures to describe variation between practices, and groups of practices. While comparing rates of requests per head of population can be used as a … [Read More...]

• Issues with reference ranges – Part 2

  24 Oct, 2019

  This is the second instalment in our series of commentaries on reference ranges used to interpret pathology test results. Here we describe two issues relating to how meaningful reference ranges are. Reference ranges are usually … [Read More...]

• Issues with reference ranges – Part 3

  24 Oct, 2019

  This is the third instalment in our series of commentaries on using reference ranges to interpret pathology test results. Reference ranges vary between labs Classically, the reference range is defined statistically: it is the interval … [Read More...]

• Fake seasonality in potassium results – dangerous and avoidable

  14 Oct, 2019

  In our initial analyses of pathology data from the South West for our OpenPathology.net project, there is a pronounced (sometimes extreme) increase in high potassium results during the winter months, and a corresponding increase in … [Read More...]

• Seasonality in Haemoglobin test results

  14 Oct, 2019

  In our initial analyses of pathology data from the South West for our OpenPathology.net project, we have noticed subtle but consistent variation in haemoglobin test results throughout the year. Haemoglobin (Hb) levels falling below certain … [Read More...]

• Validating pathology data against known shifts in clinical practice

  10 Sep, 2019

  OpenPathology is our project exploring and feeding back to clinicians on their test requesting rates. Having established that patient counts are subject to some inaccuracy in existing analyses (see our previous blog), it’s important to … [Read More...]

• Getting population sizes right

  09 Sep, 2019

  At OpenPathology, we’ve already found interesting variation in test request rates between practices, but we’d also like to compare whole laboratories. The number of tests per patient is an important measure for understanding variation in … [Read More...]

• Examining variation in test request rates

  02 Sep, 2019

  We are excited to reveal some of the data for our new OpenPathology.net project. Similar to our previous project for NHS prescribing data (openprescribing.net/), we are developing free, open dashboards for analysing NHS pathology data. … [Read More...]