Abstract
Major advances in clinical laboratory automation have made it increasingly difficult for laboratories and institutions to offer hands-on practical training in the manual methods used in Clinical Biochemistry. This interactive iBook entitled ‘Practical clinical chemistry: Core concepts’ by T.S Pillay aims to address this problem by offering an interactive guide covering aspects of medical laboratory biochemistry, molecular biology and basic laboratory statistical analyses. It was compiled by chemical pathologists and clinical biochemists trained in South Africa and the UK and contains a series of practical exercises that will help trainees build the practical foundations required for an understanding of the biochemical methodology used within the laboratory.
The book is split into 15 chapters covering spectrophotometry, enzyme assays, method comparison and basic molecular biology. Generally, each chapter is split into two sections. Section one is aimed at the trainee, giving a brief introduction to the chapter followed by practical exercises to work through. Section two is for the supervisor, giving guidance on the equipment and supplies required for each practical together with model answers.
One of the unique selling points of this iBook is its interactive nature. However, I found this feature to be lacking in some areas where it could have been most useful, for example tables requiring data input were not interactive. The book would benefit from some adjustment to its formatting; the background colours often clash with coloured text and figures. The page layout is often too busy and somewhat confusing; again slight adjustments would make the material easier to follow.
The book is based on the iBooks platform for Apple OsX and iOS, thus limiting its distribution to users of this platform. I don’t have an iPad, and would feel more comfortable taking a paper copy of the book into the laboratory, which is where much of its use is intended (although obviously this would limit its interactive nature).
Overall, it is a great concept to have all practical aspects of clinical chemistry training together in one book. There is clearly a gap in the market and such a book would be a benefit to trainees working towards the practical component of FRCPath. However, the book does not cover other more recent aspects of practical clinical biochemistry and laboratory medicine, for example uncertainty of measurement, calculations in general and the broader aspects of laboratory quality. The iBook format does allow the authors to update its contents regularly, and therefore perhaps this could be addressed in the future.