How the Westgard QC Rules Got Their Name: A Personal Recollection.

Abstract

In the clinical chemistry laboratory of 2018, Westgard QC Rules are widely used and understood by many clinical laboratory scientists and technologists. Many of these same people would be hard-pressed to explain what a Technicon® SMAC™ was. In 1981, the opposite was true. The purpose of this brief note is to describe how the multirule quality control (QC) concepts of Westgard et al. (1) were integrated into a high-speed chemistry analyzer, the Technicon SMAC® II. This integration lead to their popular name, “Westgard QC” and their implementation into routine operation in many clinical laboratories. In the early 1960s, laboratory automation began to change the work flow profile of the clinical laboratory. Automated workstations such as the Technicon AutoAnalyzer™ encouraged the batching of samples by test. By 1967, the first of the multiple analysis chemistry analyzers, the Technicon SMA™ (Sequential Multiple Analysis), enabled the chemistry laboratory to process a single sample to provide 12 different test results at a rate of 30 samples per hour. Consolidation of the laboratory's work flow onto multiple analyzers became the work flow pattern in many clinical settings. The trend was accelerated by the introduction of the Technicon SMAC, (Sequential Multiple Analysis plus Computer) in 1972. This system performed 20 tests on a single serum sample at a sampling rate of 120 samples per hour. Commercial shipments of the system began in 1974. The system …