Electronic Data Validation Using the EIM System

Oral Presentation

Prepared by T. Walters
Locus Technologies, 299 Fairchild Drive, Mountain View, California, 94043, United States


Contact Information: walterst@locustec.com; 650-960-1640


ABSTRACT

Computer-aided validation of laboratory analytical results offers much promise to companies and organizations willing to invest in the necessary configuration and setup of their sampling and analytical databases. For an electronic data validation module to be successful, it must afford the user considerable flexibility in how data problems are identified and flagged, and must provide various means of batching analyses to facilitate the setup process. Once configured to a particular validation program, computer-aided validation must run intuitively and efficiently to perform automated checks and generate validation findings for review.

Automated checks can easily be performed on completeness, holding times, blank contamination, spike and surrogate recoveries, duplicate relative percent differences, and sample condition by the lab at the time of receipt. Having these checks performed electronically reduces errors and takes a fraction of the time as manual review. This frees the data validator to focus on validation components requiring professional judgment and/or raw data review. An ancillary benefit of computer-aided validation is the opportunity to easily generate a wide range of validation summary tables for inclusion in data quality reports all without the rekeying of any data.