A Total Error Approach for the Validation of Quantitative Analytical Methods

Purpose Typical acceptance criteria for analytical methods are not chosen with regard to the concept of method suitability and are commonly based on ad-hoc rules. Such approaches yield unknown and uncontrolled risks of accepting unsuitable analytical methods and rejecting suitable analytical methods. This paper proposes a formal statistical framework for the validation of analytical methods, which incorporates the use of total error and controls the risks of incorrect decision-making.