Structural health monitoring (SHM) technology offers a new approach to interrogate the integrity of structures in real -time or on demand without physically disassembling the structures, unlike tradition al inspection techniques such as Non-destructive Inspection (NDI) which require structural disassembly as well as a human to perform the inspection. SHM uses permanently mounted sensors to gather data from structures while typical NDI methods utilize removable probes to gather data. Both SHM and NDI may share the same physics for structural integrity detection during operation, however, there clearly exist fundamentally different engineering disciplines in these two approaches. In order to transition SHM from R&D to field implementation, the reliability of the technique must be demonstrated and quantified using acceptable established procedures used by the industry. Probability of detection (POD) is a well accepted measurement method to quantify NDI results. This talk will examine the similarities and differences between traditional ultrasound methods and Lamb-wave based SHM techniques, and will identify key areas where reliability assessment of SHM may be different from traditional NDI. A procedure for evaluating the detection capability of SHM is proposed. It is anticipated that more studies will be needed to generate data to validate the procedure.