A New Model to Determine the Personal Reference Interval of Tests in Laboratory Medicine: A Preliminary Study

The concept of personalized medicine has become popular within the last decade. However, personalized medicine needs correct diagnosis and monitoring of patients which can be done by using personalized reference intervals of laboratory tests. In this paper we proposed a model based on within subject biological variation to calculate the personalized reference intervals of tests requested by physicians for the diagnosis of diseases. We used the data of adult patients admitted to check-up units and calculated the personal reference intervals. If the patients are on steady-state, only a few data are sufficient to calculate the personal reference intervals. The model is very simple and can be used by physicians safely and easily.