This book developed out of a course in laboratory informatics for residents in training in pathology and for fellows in the clinical laboratory sciences given over a period of years. The topics covered and the approach taken were strongly influenced by real-life experience. Pathology residents and clinical laboratory scientists, like the general population, vary greatly in familiarity with information issues in the laboratory and the computer system and infrastructure that supports an information system. Some know essentially nothing at all, while others have considerable expertise in some aspect, such as microcomputer functions or even computer engineering. For all, the idea of the clinical diagnostic laboratories as primarily an information.
