Project Details:
Properties and units for transfusion medicine and immunohaematology
| Project No.: | 2001-059-1-700 |
| Start date: | 2002-07-01 |
| End date: | 2003-10-01 |
| Division: | Chemistry and Human Health Division |
To work out properties and units for Transfusion Medicine and Tissue Typing based on the former C-NPU commission's concepts and syntactic rules. The C-NPU commission, maintained as a joint IFCC-IUPAC activity for two decades, has as its main task to promote and maintain scientifically and conceptually sound ways of expressing the outcome of measurements and other examinations in laboratory medicine. The NPU coding scheme and vocabulary, based on the SI system, concepts theory and high-level international standards, is the main outcome and should be the cornerstone for expressing measurements within international communication standards.
> See former Series on Properties and Units in the Clinical Laboratory Sciences
The background, previous recommendations, and technical reports are accessible from the link above.
It is a characteristic of the fields of Transfusion medicine and tissue typing that the properties examined may involve both nominal, ordinal ("titre"), differential, and rational scales. Thus the project will establish the metrological and logical basis for expressing such properties. In addition, the necessary international coding scheme identifiers and code values will have to be chosen as required by interlaboratory transmission between databases. In this respect, active collaboration and/or endorsement by the International Society of Blood Transfusion and its working parties on the terminology for red cells, platelet and neutrophile antigens will be sought. Unambiguous expression of properties will assist in fulfilling safety and legal requirements in the handling of blood products intended for transfusion and organs intended for transplantation. The project conforms to the IUPAC strategic goals 2 and 4 i.e. to promote standardized nomenclature, symbols, terminology and methodology in the chemical sciences as well as to facilitate the development of effective channels of communication in international chemistry community.
Project completed - A technical report - number XIX in the series - is published in Pure Appl. Chem. 75(10), 1477-1600, 2003.