JCTLM Members’ and Stakeholders’ meeting and Workshop on 'EQA schemes elucidating the clinical suitability of laboratory results'
4 to 5 December 2023
Contact person
Organizing Committee
Tony Badrick
Royal College of Pathologists of Australia (RCPAQAP, Australia)
Elvar Theodorsson
JCTLM WG TEP Chair, Linkoping University (Sweden)
Sverre Sandberg
Norwegian Organization for Quality Improvement of Laboratory Examinations (NOKLUS, Norway)
Greg Miller
JCTLM Chair, Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (USA)
Robert Wielgosz
BIPM France
Aim of the meeting
The JCTLM Members’ and Stakeholders’ Meeting and Workshop on “EQA schemes elucidating the clinical suitability of laboratory results” will be held at the BIPM on Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 December 2023. The biennial meeting of the Members and Stakeholders will start with a morning session on JCTLM update and report on 4 December and will be followed by a Workshop to explore the relationship between proficiency testing/external quality assurance (EQA) and traceability. A range of experts will describe the current quality of laboratory assays and how EQA schemes can identify where improvement in assays is needed. The theme of this Workshop is how EQA schemes can improve and provide a more helpful assessment of this quality.
The meeting will be held as an hybrid meeting and registration is open.
Participation
The workshop is open to all individuals and groups with an interest in traceability and method standardization or harmonization. These include laboratory medicine specialists, EQA providers, IVD manufacturers, and national metrology institutes. Participants will be able to share with peers and experts and access the Workshop presentation.
Anticipated outcomes
Proficiency testing monitors the traceability of measurement results without being a part of the traceability hierarchies themselves. The workshop provides an understanding of the roles of proficiency testing in maintaining traceability, its challenges, and current developments in elucidating the clinical suitability of laboratory results.
JCTLM Update and Executive Report
- Monday 4 December - morning
Workshop on EQA schemes elucidating the clinical suitability of laboratory results
- Monday 4 December (afternoon) and Tuesday 5 December
- Session 1 - Current status of and responsibility for traceability in laboratory medicine
Chair: Rita Horvath
- How good are we now? Heidi Berghäll
- How good do we need to be? Rita Horvath
- Who is responsible: labs, manufacturers, regulators? Marianela Perez-Torres
- Session 2 - EQA principles, practice, and practical use
Chair: Greg Miller
- Should individual labs adjust results to make them traceable or leave this to manufacturers. What about a lab wanting to align instruments from different suppliers? Greg Miller
- Challenges in assessing traceability of measurement results with EQA materials -commutability. Sverre Sandberg
- Setting an APS – the details and the process + should the same APS be used in all settings. Graham Jones
- EQA using patient medians to monitor harmonization and standardization. Anne Solsvik
- Session 3 - EQA principles, practice, and practical use
Chair : Piet Meijer
- Aggregating data from different EQA-schemes using common concepts, terms, and codes for measuring systems, measurands, reagents and reagents lots. Anthony Killeen
- Common program structure – reporting. David Ducroq
- EQA schemes working together. Wim Coucke
- Session 4 - The role of EQA in quality systems
Chair : Mauro Panteghini
- The role of certification schemes. Hubert Vesper
- Higher order EQA schemes. Anja Kessler
- Can EQA with non-commutable material be combined with EQA with commutable material to support traceability assessment? Anne Stavelin
- Session 5 – The driving forces of traceability in laboratory medicine and in EQA
Chair : Sverre Sandberg
- How is EQA financed? Tony Badrick
- Can financing systems be used to catalyse the development of EQA schemes to assess metrological traceability of results. Sverre Sandberg
- What should accreditation bodies ask for? Gary Horowitz
- The benefits of standardised results (and the risks of non-standardised results). Mauro Panteghini
- How can Regulatory EQA schemes support traceability. Solveig Linko
Working documents
Programme