National Performance Framework

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is actively working on developing drug performance indicators for uptake and application by the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA). In Great Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) has established a National Performance Framework that has... 

This work has been performed within the framework of PAI/IUAP 4-10. Gontran Herrier thanks the FNRS (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium) for a FRIA scholarship. Authors thank Mr. Bart Pauwls and Prof. G. Van Tendeloo for useful discussions and help in the TEM analysis. 

This work has been performed within the framework of PAI/IUAP 4-10. Gontran Herrier thanks Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium for a FRIA scholarship. 

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. 

The work was performed within the framework of Integrated Program of Fundamental Research of Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences Nano-structured Systems, Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology (project Synthesis of Ferreed Medicobiological Nanocomposites and Investigation of Their Properties ). 

Due to the demand for reliable and comparable methods, performance requirements have been established at a national and international level for implementation of official methods, e.g. by European legislation, by the CEN or the Association of the Analytical Communities (AOAC) International, and worldwide by Codex Alimen-tarius (CAC). Thus any method proposed to be used for official purposes must be validated in a collaborative trial study, resulting in defined method performance characteristics [4], The framework for the design and conduct of such collaborative trial studies, as well as the statistical evaluation, are also defined in appropriate protocols [5]. Any method that has been successfully validated according to these protocols can be recognised as an official method for use in legal cases or for international trade control purposes. 

Internationally, standardisation of methods has mainly been carried out within the framework of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) although other organisations such as the Comite Europeen de Normalisation (CEN) or the International Dairy Federation (IDF) for dairy products are also actively involved. The choice to standardise a method is not always sufficiently based on comparison of methods or on performance characteristics. Acceptance of international standard methods takes considerable time as all countries or states involved have to agree on the proposed method. Despite the availability of a great number of internationally accepted methods there are still important differences between the national methods used in EC member states. There are namely situations for which a national method is optimised for a local... 

In the framework of a research program of national interest, electrokinetic remediation was applied to two different sea sediments dredged from industrial harbors located in Northeastern Italy (namely, sediment V) and Southwestern Sardinia (namely, sediment S). Both areas were subjected for several years to industrial pressure of chemical and mining type, and the analysis performed on the two sediment samples indicated significant heavy metal content high contents of As and Zn (181 and 3720mg/kg, respectively) were detected in sediment V, as were Pb and Zn (4970 and 5210mg/kg, respectively) in sediment S (see Table 12). 

This work was performed in the framework of the Scientific Cooperation between the Institute of Materials, Jean Rouxel, Nantes and the Laboratory of Optics and Spectroscopy of the National Institute of Materials Physics, Bucharest. A part of this work was supported by the Romanian research projects IDEl 39, IDEl 41, PN n 62081 and PN 1172182. 

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