Amazon.com description: Product Description: This practical book facilitates the understanding and practice of evidence-based laboratory medicine. The principles of evidence-based practice confer expectations of enhanced clinical effectiveness and better health outcomes across the spectrum of healthcare delivery, including laboratory medicine. Developing and using a strong portfolio of evidence for laboratory medicine is challenging because outcomes invariably depend on the availability of test results and the use of an appropriate intervention. Valid test results depend on an explicit understanding of the need for the test and the action that will follow. For all of these reasons, study design is a crucial issue. Few good quality studies on the effectiveness of diagnostic tests exist, not because tests are ineffective, but because of poor study design. Clinical effectiveness of diagnostic tests and evidence of improved outcomes are vitally important in patient care, organizational management, and policy decision making. Demonstrating the VALUE of the test as a part of healthcare policy and showing how laboratory medicine contributes to healthcare provision and specifically how the laboratory can facilitate change are major challenges. This book reviews the basics of evidence-based medicine from identification of the clinical question, to searching and evaluation of the literature, systematic review, and the essentials of study design, data evaluation, and guideline development. Laboratorians--from the research scientist designing outcome studies to the laboratory director faced with day-to-day operations--will benefit from this approach.