International collaborative study for the calibration of a proposed international standard for thromboplastin, rabbit, plain

Background: A preparation of rabbit brain thromboplastin, provisionally coded 04/162, is proposed as a candidate for the World Health Organization (WHO) International Standard (IS) for thromboplastin (rabbit, plain), meant to replace the IS coded RBT/90 (rabbit, plain), stocks of which are now exhausted. Results: The preparation was calibrated in an international collaborative study involving 21 laboratories from13 countries and the calibration was performed against the existing WHO-IS (i.e. rTF/95 and OBT/79) and other Certified Reference Materials from the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements of the European Commission (i.e.CRM149 S) and from the European Action on Anticoagulation (i.e. EUTHR-01). An additional candidate rabbit brain thromboplastin coded as 04/106 was also included in the study. On the basis of predefined criteria (the within- and between-laboratory precision of the calibration and the conformity to the calibration model), 04/162 was the preferred candidate. Conclusions: The assigned International Sensitivity Index value was 1.15 and the inter-laboratory SD and coefficient of variation were 0.057% and 4.9%, respectively

Impact of point-of-care international normalized ratio monitoring on quality of treatment with vitamin K antagonists in non-self-monitoring patients: a cohort study

Conclusions Although associated with lower TTR, POC INR monitoring is a safe and effective alternative to laboratory INR monitoring in NSM patients on VKA.Afdeling Klinische Chemie en Laboratoriumgeneeskunde (AKCL

Evaluation of Research in Context; a Quick Scan of an Emerging Field

‘Wikipedia ’ of contextual evaluation This Quick Scan is work in progress, a first step to collect information about contextual evaluation of research, that is evaluation that regards research in a broad context and includes all relevant output and the interaction of researchers with their social environment. We invite readers to add articles and other literature, methods, topics, conferences etc. and turn this into a joint enterprise. What we plan to do is through the ERiC website (www.eric-project.nl) organize a ‘living ’ document – indeed something like the Wikipedia encyclopedia- containing organized information on evaluation, in particular contextual evaluation. We’ll form an editorial board with international members and will update the document regularly, at least four times per year. Next versions will be issued in September and December 2007. Both the ERiC-project and the Science System Assessment Department of the Rathenau Instituut will take responsibility for this. Contributions and comments can be sent to leonie.van.drooge@bureau

The academic debate on e-voting in a socio-political context

Computer-based voting as a field of research and societal debate emerged in the early 2000s. Starting in the ‘old democracies’ in Europe and North America, it has spread to other parts of the world. The question is whether research and the academic debate on electronic voting is related to the sociopolitical context in which it takes place. In order to examine this, we retrieved from the Scopus database all papers that relate to internet voting to answer the following research questions: Is there an increased scientific interest for evoting in emerging democracies? Is the approach towards e-voting different between ‘old’ and ‘emerging’ democracies (i.e. technical, political, economical, social) and in terms of evaluation of e-voting (i.e. positive, negative)? We find that developed democracies have a more balanced approach in terms of disciplinary attention and in terms of evaluation of e-voting than the emerging democracies and the hybrid and authoritarian regimes. Africa deviates from this, with comparable substantial social science research being conducted on evoting

Correction of INR discrepancy between laboratories using various pt systems

Thrombosis and Hemostasi