Over the last 60 years, much effort has been made to introduce and apply in the clinical laboratory sciences the concepts, designations, rules, and conventions on properties, including quantities and units, recommended by international organizations such as CGPM, ISO, IUPAC, and IFCC.
From 1994, extensions and applications to several disciplines within the clinical laboratory sciences have been made by the IFCC/IUPAC Committee/Subcommittee on Nomenclature for Properties and Units (C-SC-NPU).
In 1995, the first issue of the Silver Book was published to harmonize and facilitate access to relevant documents. From this time, many recommendations and technical reports have been prepared by the C-SC-NPU, but they are not readily available and some have been updated and aligned with other documents.
IUPAC and IFCC have now decided that it is time after 20 years to issue a second edition of the Silver Book with four objectives:
– update the recommendations and technical reports;
– enlarge the subject field by several disciplines applied in the clinical laboratory sciences;
– develop concepts used to include properties having no quantity dimensions, that are frequently submitted to examination in clinical laboratories; and
– explain when necessary the recommendations and illustrate them by examples taken from laboratory practice.
IUPAC Recommendations published by RSC (Print publication date: 18 Nov 2016)