IFCC Task Force on Outcome Studies in Laboratory Medicine (TF-OSLM) – Call For Study Proposals

The IFCC’s Task Force on Outcome Studies in Laboratory Medicine (TF-OSLM) is seeking research proposals for studies evaluating the impact of laboratory testing on health outcomes.

General requirements: The grant eligibility requirements concern the submitting organisation/ individual (“who”), project content (“what”) and project approach (“how”). Applicants should consider carefully if they fulfil the requirements and have the capacity to offer and implement projects as expected by the funding grant.

Who is eligible to apply? The grant funding seeks to reach out beyond traditional role-players in laboratory medicine to encourage applications from interdisciplinary teams, including, but not limited to clinical teams, in collaboration with clinical laboratory team members. At least one of the research team members must be an IFCC member.

What will be funded?

• Retrospective and/or prospective study proposals seeking to evaluate, quantify and demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of any new and/or commonly available clinical laboratory tests and/or laboratory information on patient outcomes in clinical practice (see below for details).
• The range of outcomes are defined as, but not limited to:

1) Clinical management effects due to testing (e.g., confidence in clinical decision marking which is at least somewhat dependent on lab results, change in confidence should be defined by appropriate stakeholders such as clinical staff, not the laboratory)

2) Direct health effects from information provided by Laboratory testing (e.g., morbidity and mortality)

3) Effectiveness of disease specific outcomes

4) Patient-centeredness (e.g., Emotional, social, cognitive, or behavioural effects, patient experience, and patient satisfaction)

5) Safety

6) Laboratory testing and/or laboratory information leading to best clinical practice and patient management

7) Efficiency (e.g., readmission rates, length of stay, discharge rate, procedure rate)

8) Timeliness (e.g., time to intervention)

9) Burden of disease (e.g., quality of life)

10) Benefits to stakeholders including patients, clinical staff, laboratories, finance departments, government agencies, funding agencies, insurance companies, industry partners, hospital leadership and management teams, etc.

11) Health policy

12) Reduced healthcare expenditures and costs

• The expected outcomes should be based on specific analytes, diseases and clinical scenario and consider to 1) identify the clinical pathway and how it changes with a new or different type of test; 2) identify different “stakeholders” contributing to the pathway and 3) measure the expected benefits and disbenefits to the stakeholders
• Multi-center studies and multidisciplinary research team including collaborators outside of the laboratory is highlight recommended
• Studies support or are relevant to the implementation of the test to show value/benefits of test in routine practice are highlight recommended
• Avoid ‘lab-centric” outcomes such as turn-around time, cost savings only related to reduction in testing volume, etc

Expected deliverables:

Peered reviewed publications in high quality journal within 2 years.

Click here to access the application information