An analysis device management system manages one or a plurality of analysis devices and includes a first generator that one-to-one corresponds to each analysis device and manages state information of a corresponding analysis device, a storage that stores the module, a receiver that receives an analysis execution request for using the one or plurality of analysis devices, and a state manager that updates the state information of one or a plurality of modules corresponding to the one or plurality of analysis devices designated by the received analysis execution request.

Predictive quality control apparatus and methods for diagnostic testing systems may include a decision module that continually receives and correlates related data along with quality control results. The related data may include, but not be limited to, one or more of the number and type of tests previously performed by a diagnostic analyzer, analyzer temperature, vibration level, humidity level, atmospheric pressure, degree of water ionization, refrigerated storage temperature of components used by the diagnostic analyzer, reagent lot number, reagent lot expiration, and/or other sensor and/or externally-sourced data. The decision module may be trained with quality control results indicating acceptable and unacceptable analyzer operation along with the related data in order to recognize patterns that may indicate subsequent unacceptable analyzer operation. The predictive apparatus and methods may accordingly notify a user of potentially unacceptable analysis operation well before discovery of such by conventional quality control testing.

A method for operating and diagnosing faults in a laboratory instrument comprising a plurality of subsystems may comprise performing an analytic sequence and a set of diagnostic steps. Such a method may be performed using a diagnostic reagent comprising paramagnetic particles and lacking an antibody component. Such a method may also include evaluating a set of the instrument's subsystems in the opposite of the order in which those subsystems are used during analysis.

A system and method for presenting laboratory data to a user are presented. The system comprises a perception component for continuously gathering in-situ context data regarding a laboratory and the user, a user modeling component for receiving the in-situ context data from the perception component to create a user specific model for each user, a laboratory device awareness component for monitoring the status, performance, alarms, and/or maintenance of the laboratory devices, a notification component for receiving the in-situ context data from the perception component and the laboratory device status data from the laboratory device awareness component and for processing and determining which data from the in-situ context data and the laboratory device status data are to be presented to the user, and a presentation component for presenting the processed data from the notification component. The presented data comprises both public and private notification of the data to the user.

A method for operating and diagnosing faults in a laboratory instrument comprising a plurality of subsystems may comprise performing an analytic sequence and a set of diagnostic steps. Such a method may be performed using a diagnostic reagent comprising paramagnetic particles and lacking an antibody component. Such a method may also include evaluating a set of the instrument's subsystems in the opposite of the order in which those subsystems are used during analysis.

A computer-implemented method for determining failures in laboratory equipment comprising: a) receiving a desired probability of false rejection (P.sub.fr) and a desired error detection rate (.sub.D), such as a desired probability of error detection (P.sub.ed), relating to one or more QC levels (J) of quality control (QC) samples to be processed by the equipment; b) setting a number of runs (R) to one; c) calculating an error detection rate (.sub.D) based at least partially on R; d) determining if .sub.D is below .sub.D, and if so: increase R by one, and repeat steps c) to d), and if not: define a rule for determining failures in the laboratory equipment based, at least partially, on R; e) receiving or collecting standardized QC results; f) applying the rule defined in step d) to the standardized QC results; g) determining failures in the equipment, if the standardized QC results comply with the rule.

A method of generating smear quality control information according to an embodiment may include: obtaining a plurality of image data from a plurality of smears, respectively; obtaining, from the plurality of image data, feature values each of which reflects a staining state of each smear; and generating quality control information based on the feature values.

A method of performing a study using one or more laboratory analyzers includes displaying on a display one or more evaluation studies performable on the one or more laboratory analyzers; receiving a selected evaluation study to be performed on the one or more laboratory analyzers from the one or more evaluation studies; generating, by a processor, instructions configured to operate the one or more laboratory analyzers to perform the evaluation study; and executing the instructions in the one or more laboratory analyzers. The instructions cause the one or more laboratory analyzers to perform an analysis using one or more test materials in response to the selected evaluation study. Other methods and apparatus are disclosed.