Bio-Rad Laboratories is excited to invite you to our online Quality Control Masterclass! Over the course of three days, you will get the opportunity to learn about quality control in the lab, the importance of quality control with real life examples from the experts and tips to manage your data to help your clinical decision-making needs.
When quality control is more important than ever before, find out about what it means for the future of your lab, your resource and the impact on molecular testing.
These webinars also give you the perfect opportunity to ask the experts their QC recommendations and the best way to manage quality in your lab.
Register for the Quality Control Masterclass
All Masterclasses will include English subtitles.
October 18: The Importance of Quality Control for the Pre-Analytical phase
Dr Janne Cadamuro - The Importance of Quality Control for the Pre-Analytical phase
In the past, laboratories across the world have focused on intra laboratory errors, including their avoidance using quality control. For laboratories accredited according to the ISO 15189 normative, or for those who are aiming for that status, monitoring and documentation of extra-analytical errors already is a mandatory feature. A recent survey shows that of those laboratories, who are already collecting preanalytical quality indicators, such as hemolysis rates, almost 1/3 do not act upon their deviations.
Several projects, freely available, such as the IFCC–MQI project, which provides guidelines on collecting extra-analytical quality indicators, as well as databases for their documentation, including benchmarking possibilities, may serve as a tool for standardized collection of pre and post analytical errors.
Dr Manou Martin - Lab experience with Serum Indices Internal Quality Control in a Hospital Laboratory
The presence of hemolysis (H), icterus (I) and lipemia (L) in diagnostic samples is an important preanalytical interference. Monitoring and objective assessment of the instrument’s response in detecting hemolysed, icteric or lipemic samples is an important activity. In automated laboratories, special attention is needed on the management of internal quality for HIL indices.
The presentation will describe how Serum Indices IQC are implemented in the Quality Assurance Process/Procedure in a University Hospital Clinical Laboratory.
October 19: The future of QC management in laboratory
Dr Marcus Herrmann - Integrated quality control in diagnostic lab : the Graz system
Analytical quality of laboratory results has great impact on the standard of patient care. Laboratories are often unaware that their analytical quality standards permit unacceptable variability which may have a substantial impact on patient safety. Modern quality control software tools, such as URT, allow state-of-the-art administration and interpretation of internal quality control results, thus facilitating high analytical quality in all areas of medical laboratories. Integrating such an advanced internal quality control system with high level external quality controls provides additional security and helps identifying the cause of erratic quality controls.
This presentation explains how the central laboratory at the Medical University of Graz (Austria) has redesigned its quality control system and how this has improved analytical quality.’
John Yundt Pacheco - Designing QC Procedures for Multiple Instruments
With lab consolidation, many laboratories are running the same analyte on multiple instruments. This produces an additional challenge as there will be bias between the instruments with some running higher than the group and some running lower than the group.
This presentation will assess the impact of using a single QC target and SD for the instrument population:
- The impact on the risk of patient harm from erroneous results when using a single QC target will be compared to using individual instrument means
- The impact on the distribution of false rejections when using a single QC SD will be compared to using individual instrument SD's
- The impact on managing the QC program with single QC targets / SD's compared to using individual instrument means/SD's
October 20: QC strategy for Molecular testing
Dr Duane Newton - Utilization of Unity data management solutions for assessment of quality control of viral load assays based on clinical decision-making needs
Viral load assays play an important role in diagnosis and management of a variety of infections and require robust quality programs to ensure accurate result reporting. Acceptability of results necessitates utilization of quality control rules (Westgard rules) that balance the benefit of error detection with the cost of false rejection.
This seminar will discuss how to determine allowable error for a test so that clinically relevant changes in viral load can be identified and will also demonstrate how to use Bio-Rad Laboratories’ Unity QC data management solutions to choose and implement QC rules that strike the right balance between error detection and false rejection.
Mr. David Gauthier - The challenges around commutability between quantitative real-time PCR assays: the example of CMV
Immunosuppressed patients who have undergone solid organ or stem cell transplants require quantitative monitoring of different viruses over time (viral load testing), and for logistical reasons may have this testing performed by different laboratories. As clinical laboratories may utilize different platforms and/or different protocols, this may lead to results that cannot be compared from one laboratory to another (i.e., are not commutable).
The aim of this presentation is to highlight differences between assays that may contribute to the challenge of establishing commutability and opens the discussion around potential solutions that may aid in recognizing and understanding the sources of variations between assays.