Clinical pathology applies laboratory methods to screening, diagnosis, classification and prognosis of disease. It is important in clinical decisions and as a route for science and technology into practice. These roles change practice and hence resource use and costs. Pathology is not entirely objective and depends heavily on subjective, expert, particularly visual diagnosis. This creates problems with standardisation, accuracy and communication.
Pathology is a good model of clinical investigation and decision-making.
Pathology also provides important clinical standards and outcome measures. As with all medicine, problems arise from authoritarian tradition, with wide variations in practice, use and costs by both pathologists and clinicians. Poor handling of uncertainty and lack of standardisation have contributed to bad publicity, litigation and official reports commenting on ignorance of effectiveness of investigations. EBM is about linking research to patients and service problems, and about clinical effectiveness. The approach identifies real clinical problems which are translated into questions answerable by literature search and critical review, or by appropriate generalisable research.