title: Assessment of an expert system for the automated validation of electrophoretic profiles.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Core-lab of the Greater Romagna Area Hub Laboratory carries out about 250,000 capillary electrophoresis assays/year. The huge workload demands the assessing of an Experimental Expert System (EES) capable to sort out the negative samples.
  
  
  METHODS
  Capillarys 2 analyzer has been employed coupled with an EES (based on five simple rules) integrated with the electrophoretic test management software PhoresisCore for assessing the entire workload of a week (5,683 samples). The classification was compared with that of two expert laboratorians.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The expert system automatically classified 2974 profiles as negative and no positive samples were erroneously classified as negative (negative predictive value: 100%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The EES sensitivity was 100% and the FTE required for the validation was reduced from 1.26 to 0.63. The EES could be easily implemented in routine activity embedded in a middleware or directly running in the analyzer improving the workflow.
authors: Romolo M
authors: RM
authors: Dorizzi
authors: Valerio
authors: V
authors: Zanardi
authors: Riziero
authors: R
authors: Agnoletti
authors: Anna
authors: A
authors: Alberelli
authors: Alessandra
authors: A
authors: Babini
authors: Paolo
authors: P
authors: De Vita
mesh_terms: D019075:Electrophoresis, Capillary / Q000592:standards*; D005103:Expert Systems; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care