Dear Colleagues,
The next IFCC webinar: “Minimum quality specifications based on the state of art” will be held on September 4th, 2024.
Defining analytical performance specifications (APS) in the clinical laboratory is the fundamental step in the quality cycle of the measurements, prior to the verification of the results obtained and the control of the procedures over time.
To obtain the APS, the guidelines of the 2014 Milan Consensus are followed, which proposes a hierarchy of three models that are recommended to be followed:
– Model 1. Based on the effect of analytical performance on clinical outcomes.
– Model 2. Based on the components of the biological variation of the measurand.
– Model 3. Based on the state of the art.
The number of publications on the first model proposed by the Milan Agreement is very limited. There is no proven methodology on how they should be obtained.
Despite the enormous effort of the EFLM for the standardisation of the biological variation model, there are still a limited number of APS for the measurands and changes in the published APS values occur in short periods of time.
In 2008, the Interdisciplinary Expert Commission on Quality Specifications (CEIEC) began to publish the minimum consensus specifications based on the state of the art for Spanish laboratories.
The state of the art has a non-standardised definition and therefore the values obtained have a dose of arbitrariness. It is suggested that “they are the highest level of analytical performance technically achievable” or “alternatively, the analytical performance achieved by a certain percentage of laboratories”, but this percentage is not quoted, while for the CEIEC “it is the information that characterises the performance of the analytical systems of a group of selected laboratories, in a given period of time”; neither does it quote the percentage of laboratories, but it does indicate that it is the APS value capable of being met by 90% of the laboratories when processing 75% of the samples. These are minimum specifications that do not replace Milan’s model but should at least be met by the clinical laboratory.
The CEIC state of the art APS calculation model is easily transportable to other countries as the state of the art depends on the degree of technological complexity of the analytical measurements in the country.
The presentations aim to update and clarify the concepts of the state of the art. To give an overview of how they can be calculated based on external quality assessment data at each site and how to handle the data obtained in the clinical laboratory to apply them.
This webinar comprises of three following presentations of 20 min each followed by 20 min of panel discussion at the end.
Chair: Dr. Raul Girardi
Talk 1- “State of the art” – Dr. Jorge Morancho Zaragoza
Talk 2- “Algorithm for obtaining consensual minimum quality specifications” – Dr. Angel Manuel Salas García
Talk 3- “State of the Art Charts” – Dr. Enrique Prada de Medio
- Time Zones: Live presentations starting at: 8:00AM EDT-New York ; 2:00PM CET-Rome; 8:00PM CST-Beijing;
Important: Please ensure that you carefully determine the time that the presentation will start in your global time zone. Click here to convert to your time-zone.
- Recorded webinar: available on demand
- Certificate of participation: available for all registrants
