检验医学是医疗卫生中的一项医学专业。医疗卫生的未来发展趋势表明对诊断性检查提供的信息的依赖程度将越来越高，这意味着检验医学的重要作用将得到巩固。检验医学领导者的职责在于从当地医疗卫生环境中发展检验医学的中心地位，进而使患者能最大获益。临床实验室负责人的首要责任是通过国际标准实验室认可（例如ISO 15189）来确保各方面质量的持续改进。在此基础上，地区、国家及国际检验医学领导者需要为检验医学提供增值服务，来确保为患者个人或群体提供最适宜的传递、使用、开发和评估服务。对附加价值的简要诠释的缩写是“SCIENCE”，包括7个方面：标准化和一致性（standardisation and harmonisation）、临床效益（clinical effectiveness）、创新（innovation）、循证实践（evidence-based practice）、新项目应用（novel applications）、成本效益（cost effectiveness）和教育培训（education of others）。另一简单方法可用于评估实验室医学的发展，即通过三方面的框架结构（运营效率、患者管理及患者行为）对任何发展进行评估。这2种方法均可使复杂问题转变为简单且可衡量的结果。专业人员和患者则可从良好实践中分享未来检验医学发展的益处。

Laboratory medicine is a medical specialty at the centre of healthcare. Future trends in healthcare indicate increasing dependence on knowledge obtained from diagnostic investigations, meaning that the central role of laboratory medicine will be consolidated. Leaders in laboratory medicine have a professional responsibility to develop the centrality of laboratory medicine in their local healthcare setting in order to derive maximum benefit for patients. The first responsibility of the head of a clinical laboratory is to ensure the provision of continuous quality improvement across a wide range of parameters culminating in laboratory accreditation against an international standard such as ISO 15189. From that essential baseline the leadership of laboratory medicine at local, national and international level needs to‘add value’to ensure the optimal delivery, use,development and evaluation of the services provided for individuals and for groups of patients. A convenient tool to illustrate added value is use of the mnemonic‘SCIENCE’. This tool allows added value to be considered in seven domains: standardisation and harmonisation; clinical effectiveness; innovation; evidence-based practice;novel applications; cost effectiveness; education of others. A second simple tool may be used to assess the impact of developments in laboratory medicine. This tool evaluates any new development against a framework that comprises three dimensions: operational efficiency, patient management, and patient behaviour. The use of these two tools should help to rationalise a complex topic into simple, measurable outcomes. The profession and the patient will benefit from sharing examples of good practice in the future development of laboratory medicine.