Metrological Traceability of Assays and Comparability of Patient Test Results.

At the start of the twenty-first century, a dramatic change occurred in the clinical laboratory community. Concepts from Metrology, the science of measurement, began to be formally applied to clinical laboratory field methods, resulting in a new appreciation of metrological calibrator traceability. It is a change because clinical laboratories test complex patient samples, for example, whole blood, serum, plasma, urine, and so forth, using commercial assay systems, not reference methods, and patient samples are tested once, not in replicate. Analytical harmonization is necessary for optimal patient care but is challenging to achieve.