On the back of the successful web-based QA programme in Hong Kong and answering market demand, i-Path has released a dedicated system, suitable for running EQA Schemes.
i-Path Software Developer, Fiona Browne, says “EQA schemes are an important practice in evaluating diagnostic performance and consistency of diagnostic performance across communities of laboratories. As effective as they are, they can prove to be complicated, time consuming and costly to run. We have designed PathXL EQA to streamline the process of circulating slides by using web-based virtual slides and on-line scoring. The system allows for tighter control over participants involvement and scoring, and the process of generating reports for the scheme is at the touch of a button. With i-Path’s slide scanning services, we now provide an end to end solution for running EQA schemes”
Setting up an EQA Scheme using PathXL EQA
PathXL EQA allows the administrator to:
- Create and name the EQA scheme
- Load virtual slides, scanned by the administrator or by i-Path’s slide scanning services.
- Define questions and meta data associated with the slides
- Define multiple choice diagnostic options or free text responses
- Annotate the slides to draw attention to specific areas
- Award different scores or categorisation of responses, depending on participant answers
- Add additional resources to a question e.g. JPEG images or other relevant files.
Using PathXL EQA the administrator can:
- Define the participants of the EQA scheme and organise into groups
- Control all user permissions and content available to each participant
- Define start and end dates/times of the scheme
- Define whether a participant can return to a previous test
- Define whether the participant can view their performance relative to others at the end of the test
- Calculate statistics and generate reports from the centrally stored participants’ results.