The August issue of Pathology in Practice features the third in a series of articles on the assessment of uncertainty of measurement, and this month Stephen MacDonald considers standard uncertainty, where all contributors are expressed in a common currency.
So far in this series he has defined what is being measured (the measurand) and identified what contributors are most influential to our overall uncertainty (modelling). Subsequently, this series will go on to consider uncertainty budgeting with internal quality control as the major contributor. This will be applicable to a large portion of the assays within every laboratory’s repertoire and is the simplest method. This will be followed by a look at assays where multiple inputs contribute to measurement uncertainty.