Uphill

Datum is in development. These rules may change before release.

How Datum decides

Every flag shows three things: your numbers, the rule that fired, and the published source behind it. These are the rules.

See change while your results still look normal.

A lab range usually covers the middle 95% of a healthy reference group. For many markers, one person moves within a far narrower band.1

Datum compares every result with your own usual, not a range built from everyone.

A result can look "normal" for years while it moves steadily away from where your body usually sits. Datum watches for that move, and only speaks up when it's real.

No false alarms.

The reference change value from laboratory science: RCV = √2 · 1.96 · √(CVA² + CVI²), with published variation figures for each marker.1, 2

A change only counts when it's bigger than lab error and your body's normal ups and downs put together.

Lab ranges are built from everyone. A move away from your usual can be worth a conversation, even inside the lab range. Not a diagnosis.

See what your doctor would want to see.

For example, triglycerides rising as HDL falls. Their ratio has been studied as one sign of insulin resistance.3

Some markers mean more together than apart. Datum shows you when they move together, and the research behind it.

Triglycerides have risen while HDL has fallen. Each is still inside the lab range. Each moved further than your results normally vary, in opposite directions, three times in a row. Same lab method throughout.

Every result is matched to its standard test code (LOINC), lab method and unit. A vitamin D result by immunoassay and one by mass spectrometry are charted apart.

A change of lab or machine never shows up as a change in you.

You, and your doctor, can always see exactly why Datum said what it said: every value behind a flag, with its date, unit and lab method.

References

  1. Fraser CG. Biological Variation: From Principles to Practice. AACC Press, 2001.
  2. Carlsen S, Petersen PH, Skeie S, Skadberg Ø, Sandberg S. Within-subject biological variation of glucose and HbA1c in healthy persons and in type 1 diabetes patients. Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. 2011;49(9):1501–1507.
  3. McLaughlin T, et al. Use of metabolic markers to identify overweight individuals who are insulin resistant. Annals of Internal Medicine, 2003.