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The programme of the German Congress for Laboratory Medicine 2022 was essentially designed by the divisions of the German Society for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (DGKL). Almost all chairpersons of the divisions organised a 90-min symposium on current topics, i.e. conceptualised the symposia and invited speakers. For this article all chairpersons summarised the lectures that were given within the symposia. The DGKL’s work is structured into 5 areas of expertise: Molecular Diagnostics, Learning & Teaching, Quality & Management, Laboratory & Diagnostics and Biobanks & Informatics. The areas of expertise are in turn subdivided into divisions. About the history of the establishment of this new structure within the DGKL you can find information in the editorial of this issue.

Legal regulations and guidelines such as the Guidelines of the German Medical Association for the Quality Assurance of Laboratory Medical Examinations (Rili-BAEK) and ISO 15189 apply to electronic laboratory reports. However, many laboratories struggle with practical implementation of these regulations and guidelines.

Point-of-care testing (POCT) has been an essential service in hospitals for many years with a main focus on reliability, classical laboratory quality criteria and easy handling. Hospital information technology (IT) security regulations, however, have not yet been adapted to the specificities of POCT. Following the POCT Symposium in Munich, the “1st Round Table POCT-IT-Security Meeting” held in October 2019 in Cologne addressed these issues and managed to establish first consensus results in the essential fields of user, data and update management, as well as network connections and user-friendliness. First practical steps include optimizing the user management by connection to a directory service and definition of access control (including emergency authorization). Patient data economy on analyzers in combination with data and data transmission encryption as well as technically secure communication protocols are relevant steps in the fields of data management and network connections. An update management needs to be contractually defined for remote services and generally includes testing in a protocol-based scenario. Providing an organizational structure for POCT-IT security is a necessary prerequisite, as are continuous training and awareness for this topic with a strong focus on usability.

Background: Terminologies facilitate data exchange and enable laboratories to assist in patient care even if complex treatment pathways involve multiple stakeholders. This paper examines the three common terminologies Nomenclature for Properties and Units (NPU), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), and SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). Methods: The potential of each terminology to encode five exemplary laboratory results is assessed. The terminologies are evaluated according to scope, correctness, formal representations, and ease of use. Results: NPU is based on metrological concepts with strict rules regarding the coding of the measurand and the result value. Clinically equivalent results are regularly mapped to the same code but there is little support to differentiate results from non-standardized measurements. LOINC encodes analyses as offered by the laboratory. Its large number of entries allows different mappings for the same analysis. SNOMED CT contains few analyses natively, but its formal composition mechanism allows representing measurements by post-coordinated expressions that are equivalent to LOINC codes. SNOMED CT's strength lies in its support of many non-numerical result values. Implicit code hierarchies exist in NPU and LOINC. SNOMED CT has explicit, elaborate axioms that elucidate the meaning of its content. Its complexity and its license conditions, however, impede a more widespread use. Interpretive comments, a crucial part of laboratory results, are still difficult to encode with any of the terminologies. Conclusions: All three terminologies have distinct potentials and limitations, but the approximation of SNOMED CT and LOINC suggests using them together. Terminologies need to be expanded to also cover interpretive comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles in the issue is presented on topics including a set of ICT tools that is used in Switzerland to render laboratory data interoperable, the process of implementing the Australian electronic health record, and some of the challenges of new diagnostic tests that produce so much data.

This article presents a systematic literature review that expands and updates a previous review on the application of machine learning to laboratory medicine. We used Scopus and PubMed to collect, select and analyse the papers published from 2017 to the present in order to highlight the main studies that have applied machine learning techniques to haematochemical parameters and to review their diagnostic and prognostic performance. In doing so, we aim to address the question we asked three years ago about the potential of these techniques in laboratory medicine and the need to leverage a tool that was still under-utilised at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]