LAB – The Clinical Laboratory Data Model

What is LAB?

LAB is a model for sending raw laboratory data from a laboratory to a sponsor company or between partner companies.

It is a content standard and can be transported in a number of different ways by various commonly used transport standards such as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) HL7 and SAS transport files. 

The LAB content can also be transported using ODM and there is an HL7 V3 message based upon the CDISC LAB content standard.  

 Business Benefits of Using LAB

The LAB model has a multilayered approach: an implementation layer and a content layer

• Content Layer – This is fixed and will have standard fields
• Implementation Layer – This can be changed dependent on which of the various transport standards being used

This approach allows for multiple implementations to transport the same content and provides flexibility to all concerned parties.

A consistent structure along with predictability of where to find important information relating to analysis decisions enhances communication about the statistical results.

Standardization of the structure of the analysis datasets allows the development of standard software tools that facilitate the access to, manipulation of, and viewing of the analysis datasets.

Standardization increases efficiency and thereby helps everyone involved in the creation and use of analysis datasets.