Difference between revisions of "Template:Article of the week"

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<div style="float: left; margin: 0.5em 0.9em 0.4em 0em;">[[File:Medical Laboratory Scientist US NIH.jpg|240px]]</div>
<div style="float: left; margin: 0.5em 0.9em 0.4em 0em;">[[File:Image 7 Information Relationship Model.jpg|200px]]</div>
A '''[[clinical laboratory]]''', (sometimes referred to as a '''medical laboratory''') is a laboratory where tests are done on clinical specimens in order to get information about the health of a patient as pertaining to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. The [[Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments]] (CLIA) program defines a clinical (medical) laboratory as "a facility that performs testing on materials derived from the human body for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of any disease or impairment of, or assessment of the health of, human beings."
'''[[Information]]''', in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message, recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. Therefore, in a general sense, information is "knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance."


The clinical laboratory at one level, whether chemistry or pathology, operates like many other testing laboratories. However, there are a number of operational differences between the clinical laboratory and the many other laboratories. One of these differences is the need to have a specific unidirectional workflow. This is intended to both minimize the risk of biohazard contamination, and to establish assurance that samples cross contamination is minimized. Another difference involves the regulations governing the management of patient data. This creates a significant challenge not generally experienced by other types of laboratories. ('''[[Clinical laboratory|Full article...]]''')<br />
From the stance of information theory, information is taken as a sequence of symbols from an alphabet, say an input alphabet χ, and an output alphabet ϒ. Information processing consists of an input-output function that maps any input sequence from χ into an output sequence from ϒ. The mapping may be probabilistic or determinate. It may have memory or be memoryless.
 
Information cannot be predicted and resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that event. The amount of information is measured in bits. The concept that ''information is the message'' has different meanings in different contexts. Thus the concept of information becomes closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, understanding, stimulation, pattern, perception, representation, and entropy. ('''[[Information|Full article...]]''')<br />
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''Recently featured'': [[Hospital information system]], [[Imaging informatics]], [[Reference laboratory]]
''Recently featured'': [[Clinical laboratory]], [[Hospital information system]], [[Imaging informatics]],
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Revision as of 14:50, 14 July 2014

Image 7 Information Relationship Model.jpg

Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message, recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. Therefore, in a general sense, information is "knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance."

From the stance of information theory, information is taken as a sequence of symbols from an alphabet, say an input alphabet χ, and an output alphabet ϒ. Information processing consists of an input-output function that maps any input sequence from χ into an output sequence from ϒ. The mapping may be probabilistic or determinate. It may have memory or be memoryless.

Information cannot be predicted and resolves uncertainty. The uncertainty of an event is measured by its probability of occurrence and is inversely proportional to that. The more uncertain an event, the more information is required to resolve uncertainty of that event. The amount of information is measured in bits. The concept that information is the message has different meanings in different contexts. Thus the concept of information becomes closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, understanding, stimulation, pattern, perception, representation, and entropy. (Full article...)

Recently featured: Clinical laboratory, Hospital information system, Imaging informatics,