On the other hand, older generation qualitative assays, especially bioassays, may be much more gross and less quantitative (e.g., counting death or dysfunction of an organism or cells in a population, or some descriptive change in some body part of a group of animals).
Assays in high commercial demand have been well investigated in research and development sectors of professional industries.
Analytes are generally tested in high-throughput autoanalyzers, and the results are verified and automatically returned to ordering service providers and end-users.
These are made possible through the use of an advanced laboratory informatics system that interfaces with multiple computer terminals with end-users, central servers, the physical autoanalyzer instruments, and other automata.
[clarification needed] According to Etymology Online,[3] the verb assay means "to try, endeavor, strive, test the quality of"; from Anglo-French assaier, from assai (noun), from Old French essai, "trial".
This might have translated later (possibly after the 14th century) into a broader usage of "analysis",[citation needed] e.g., in pharmacology, analysis for an important component of a target inside a mixture—such as the active ingredient of a drug inside the inert excipients in a formulation that previously was measured only grossly by its observable action on an organism (e.g., a lethal dose or inhibitory dose).
As with any multi-step information handling and transmission system, the variation and errors in reporting final results entail not only those intrinsic to the assay itself but also those occurring in the pre-analytic and post-analytic procedures.
Such comparisons are possible through study of general quality attributes of the assays e.g. principles of measurement (including identification, amplification and detection), dynamic range of detection (usually the range of linearity of the standard curve), analytic sensitivity, functional sensitivity, analytic specificity, positive, negative predictive values, turn around time i.e. time taken to finish a whole cycle from the preanalytic steps till the end of the last post analytic step (report dispatch/transmission), throughput i.e. number of assays done per unit time (usually expressed as per hour) etc.