Evaluation of techniques for the presentation of laboratory data .2. Accuracy of interpretation

Four tabular and two graphical techniques for the presentation of laboratory test results were evaluated in a reaction time experiment with 25 volunteers. Artificial variables and values were used to represent sets of 12 laboratory tests to eliminate the possible effects of clinical experience. Analyses focused on four types of errors in interpretation. Color-coded tables and one of the color-coded graphs greatly (2.8 times or better) reduced the number of incorrectly classified test results, as compared to the reference presentation technique. This was mainly due to a reduction of the number of abnormal test results that were not noticed by the subjects when using these presentation techniques.