Accreditation - meaning

Laboratories can become independently accredited. In this case, accreditation means that some independent auditor has reviewed the laboratory s staff, capabilities, and procedures against some set of requirements and standard practices and judged the laboratory and the workers in the laboratory capable of routinely performing some kind of laboratory work while adhering to those requirements and practices. Some accreditations are for a specific task or for a specific process others are for laboratory work in general. 

Accreditation at the European level is a relatively new concept and dates back to the early 1980s. Accreditation means the recognition of the competence of a laboratory, certification, or inspection body by independent accreditors. The accreditation bodies are typically sanctioned by a member state government to perform audits of testing and certification institutions. The audited body must be able to demonstrate that it meets the criteria described in the annexes to the directives to become recognized at the state level and notified to the European Commission and the member states. The bodies that are notified are designated to carry out conformity assessment as set out in the directives. As an assessment technique, accreditation is an... 

Producer responsibility obligations 1997 - guidance on evidence of compliance and accreditation of re-processors A new waste management licensing system - what it means - how it affects you... 

As the uncertainty of the mean is now related to the mass used for analysis and it is based on a careful evaluation of the element distribution in the material, this approach could help to evaluate further the total uncertainty budget for various analytical techniques as is required in accreditation and certification campaigns. 

As mentioned previously, it is possible to include opinions and interpretations within the scope of accreditation. It should be realized that the opinions and interpretations themselves are not accredited. This accreditation is only given if the work is already accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 [1]. What is required by the Standard is evidence of the procedure used by the laboratory to authorize an individual to give an opinion or interpretation. This means there has to be a procedure within the management system of the laboratory that sets out the criteria upon which the quality of the person giving the opinion is assessed. This may be split into two parts, namely the criteria for assessing competence and the criteria for assessing experience. 

As shown above, these include a laboratory to be third-party assessed to international accreditation standards, to demonstrate that it is in statistical control by using appropriate internal quality control procedures, to participate in proficiency testing schemes which provide an objective means of assessing and documenting the reliability of the data it is producing and to use methods of analysis that are fit-for-purpose . These requirements are summarised below and then described in greater detail later in this chapter. 

Chemical engineers were the first among engineers to import accreditation as a means to put pressure on reluctant university departments. As early as. 1921, A. D. Little, once again, published the results of a survey of chemical engineering education, and he concluded that report by stating that curricula should be quickly standardized to put an end to the anarchic situation revealed by the survey. The model to be emulated, of course, was his own as it had been realized at M.I.T. (3). 

Undaunted by his failure to get into an accredited professional art school, Marcel began an apprenticeship in a commercial print shop, L Imprimerie de la Vicomte, and earned the diploma of an ouvrier d art, by which means he was to secure a two-year exemption from the usual obligatory three-year stint of military service. In October 1905, he had enlisted as a reserve infantryman, and in April 1906 was promoted to corporal he was discharged in October of the same year. Years later, Duchamp admitted,... 

The terms validation and QA are widely used. However, a lot of analysts and laboratories do not know the exact meaning—neither the difference nor the relationship between the two terms. Validating a method is investigating whether the analytical purpose of the method is achieved, which is obtaining analytical results with an acceptable uncertainty level [4]. Analytical method validation forms the first level of QA in the laboratory (Figure 6). AQA is the complete set of measures a laboratory must undertake to ensure that it is able to achieve high-quality data continuously. Besides the use of validation and/or standardized methods, these measures are effective IQC procedures (use of reference materials, control charts, etc.), participation in proficiency-testing schemes, and accreditation to an international standard, normally ISO/IEC 17025 [2,4, 6]. 

External Quality Control and Accreditation Participation in PT schemes is an objective means of evaluating the reliability of the data produced by a laboratory. Another form of external assessment of the laboratory performance is the physical inspection of the laboratory to ensure that it complies with externally imposed standards. Accreditation of the laboratory indicates that it is applying the required... 

Fig. 1 Traceability system for the determination of the most important diagnostic markers in human body fluids in Germany. The clinical reference laboratories at the intermediate level providing calibration means to the routine medical laboratories are accredited as calibration laboratories in the framework of the German Calibration Service (DKD) and are firmly linked to the national metrology institute, PTB, by comparison measurements carried out on actual laboratory samples. Accreditation is in part required by the Federal Physicians Council (BAK) or is voluntary. The traceability system is still under development...

Abstract Current developments in Germany for establishing a traceability system for chemical measurements are reported. The focus is on a dissemination mechanism which employs chemical calibration laboratories accredited within the framework of the German Calibration Service (DKD) and acting as multipliers between the national standards level and the user level by providing the user with calibration means which are traceable to the SI via national standards. At the national standards level, a network of high-level chemistry institutes coordinated by the national metrology institute, PTB, provides the primary references for chemical measurements. 

The increased attention paid to the concept of traceability and its implementation in the world of chemical measurements has been one of the major goals of metrological activity in recent years. In Romania traceability of chemical measurement has been closely connected with the accreditation of analytical chemistry laboratories. However, this concept has only recently been adopted in this country for clinical measurements. Within this framework an attempt is made to review what traceability means in terms of clinical measurements and what is now being done by the Romanian National Institute of Metrology (INM) to develop the principles of traceability in spectrophotometrical measurements performed in clinical chemistry laboratories. 

There is an older form of words that one still sometimes sees that infers that traceability is to reliable realisations of the units in which a measurement is expressed. The proposal here given is a close cousin to that view and is related also to Belanger s approach that traceability is the means to ensure measurements of accuracy sufficient for the purpose at hand [4], an approach that Nicholas and White amended (with close consideration of the evolving role of accreditation) to the view that traceability is the ability to demonstrate the accuracy of a measurement in terms of its expressed units [5]. 

To ensure quality diagnosis, immunohistochemistry quality control will become even more important. It is expected that the next five years will see increased participation in proficiency testing, as an increase in the number of laboratories that become accredited. New technologies on the horizon will also likely facilitate more efficient means of quality control. 

In 1992 IFOAM established the IFOAM Accreditation Programme to provide a means of harmonising standards and certification worldwide. The programme offered independent evaluation of inspection bodies against the Basic Standards and the developed IFOAM criteria of organic certification programmes. In 1997 they licensed the International Organic Accreditation Service to perform this function. 

---