Guest Editorial

COST EFFECTIVENESS?

The development of very sophisticated and very large apparatus is one of the main trends in analytical rcscarch. It is pertinent to ask whether or not. all decisions to develop or to buy such equipment have a rational basis. Too often, the lasting impression is that these large instruments are more of a status symbol than a scientific necessity.

This general trend presents some problems to analytical chemists. The first is that an evaluation of the economics (a utility analysis or a cost-benefit it. lalysis) of new costly apparatus would bc welcome. IJnhappily, most analysts have no i&:1 how to go about this. Kvcn the calculation of total costs is very difficult, because no one teaches chemists about commercial systems analysis. The computation of benefit or utility offers insurmountable problctms at prcscnt. \\‘hat is the true benefit of having an apparatus which is twice as precise or has a detection limit which is lower by a factor of ten? The economics of analytical chemistry arc! riot considered to be a glamorous research object. _Xcvertheless, such studies arc nccessaw and I hope that analytical journals will try to stimulate publication of articles on cost-benefit analysis of analytical instrumentation and research.

The second and related problem is the amount of information generated. The emphasis of our research is too often on finding ways of producing more data in ii shorter time. No doubt this is iml)ortarlt, but kvc clearly kg behind in the development of methods for digesting all thesct data and for estracting from it action-oricntatcd information. It is, for instance, a well knowx fact that only a small fraction of the clinical c:l~cn~ical data produced in clinical laboratories really contributes to thtr diagnosis. In the same ivay, we may wonder what fraction of the data generated by some networks for cnviron- mcnt.;il control are put to USC’. The economic c:risis which now affects research laboratories all over the \\‘orld will perhaps have the good effect of providing the necessary stimulus to pay more attention to a cost-bcncfit analysis of such data-producing organisations. One way of increasing benefits without clreatly increasing costs is h to cstract the masimum amount of information from the data. This is one of the aims of the science of chcmomctrics, a relatively new branch of the analytical sciences, which will undoubtedly repay manifoldly both its study and its application.

D. L. hlassart