Remembering the Stockholm Consensus

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the conference Strategies to Set Global Quality Specifications in Laboratory Medicine, which was held in Stockholm. The main outcome of this conference was a hierarchy of models to set metrological requirements, commonly known as the Stockholm Consensus. Belief in the appropriateness and scientific rigour of this Consensus has since been disseminated around the world. The Stockholm Consensus has made the biological variation model the model that is most commonly used to set metrological requirements. However, this model is not objective, because it is based on the selection of the one of three multiplication factors that reflects the mean biological variation. In addition to this lack of objectivity and other weaknesses of the biological variation model, the so-called Stockholm Consensus was not a true consensus process. Since our knowledge of this field continues to grow, the setting of metrological requirements should be a matter of true consensus based on the state of the art, rather than a “pseudo-objective” process. Metrological requirements should ensure that clinical laboratories do not produce measurement results that are less precise than their measuring systems allow.