The Quality Management Group (QMG) is responsible for the planning, organisation and direction of a quality management system within all divisions of The Doctors Laboratory in accordance with appropriate accreditation and regulatory bodies. The aims of these recommendations may be summarised thus:

• To meet the needs of relevant evolving regulatory standards (e.g. CPA and GCP)
• To ensure sufficient resources and management time is devoted to quality
• Increasing clinical trial work and associated quality inspections have indicated a requirement to extend quality management operations
• To put all areas of TDL and TDL Genetics under central quality management control
• To formalise External Quality Assessment management procedures

Quality Management Definitions

Quality Assurance (QA) is the use of monitoring techniques, including inspections and audits, to promote confidence in laboratory results, to assure the quality of the data generated and to ensure compliance with accrediting bodies such as Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA).

Quality Control (QC) is the use of techniques to reduce discord and discrepancy in results of measurement of the same quantity in the same material

External Quality Assessment (EQA) is the process whereby a laboratory’s analytical performance is assessed with respect to its peers using analytical material obtained from an external provider such as a United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Scheme (UKNEQAS).