Achieving, maintaining and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability are major challenges for health laboratories. Countries worldwide committed themselves to build national capacities for the detection of, and response to, public health events of international concern when they decided to engage in the International Health Regulations implementation process. Only sound management of quality in health laboratories will enable countries to produce test results that the international community will trust in cases of international emergency. This handbook was developed through collaboration between the WHO Lyon Office for National Epidemic Preparedness and Response, the United States of America Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Laboratory Systems, and the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). It is based on training sessions and modules provided by the CDC and WHO in more than 25 countries, and on guidelines for implementation of ISO 15189 in diagnostic laboratories, developed by CLSI. This handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive reference on Laboratory Quality Management System for all stakeholders in health laboratory processes, from management, to administration, to bench-work laboratorians. This handbook covers topics that are essential for quality management of a public health or clinical laboratory. They are based on both ISO 15189 and CLSI GP26-A3 documents. Each topic is discussed in a separate chapter. The chapters follow the framework developed by CLSI and are organized as the "12 Quality System Essentials".

Establishing and maintaining laboratory quality standards are essential to generate reliable results to support clinical and public health actions. The Laboratory Quality Standardspresent a minimum set of standards that can be readily adapted by countries and applied to laboratories at every level of the health-care system. This book also outlines mechanism to implement them. This book will be of help to national policy-makers as well as regulators in developing national laboratory quality standards. It provides a simple approach to meet the minimum requirements set with the ultimate objective to comply with ISO 15189 in a logical and step-by-step manner.

When is it appropriate to return individual research results to participants? The immense interest in this question has been fostered by the growing movement toward greater transparency and participant engagement in the research enterprise. Yet, the risks of returning individual research resultsâ€"such as results with unknown validityâ€"and the associated burdens on the research enterprise are competing considerations. Returning Individual Research Results to Participants reviews the current evidence on the benefits, harms, and costs of returning individual research results, while also considering the ethical, social, operational, and regulatory aspects of the practice. This report includes 12 recommendations directed to various stakeholdersâ€"investigators, sponsors, research institutions, institutional review boards (IRBs), regulators, and participantsâ€"and are designed to help (1) support decision making regarding the return of results on a study-by-study basis, (2) promote high-quality individual research results, (3) foster participant understanding of individual research results, and (4) revise and harmonize current regulations.

This book is a comprehensive and timely compilation of strategy, methods, and implementation of a proof of concept modified quality module of Good Laboratory Practices (GLP). This text provides a historical overview of GLP and related standards of quality assurance practices in clinical testing laboratories as well as basic research settings. It specifically discusses the need and challenges in audit, documentation, and strategies for its implications in system-dependent productivity striving research laboratories. It also describes the importance of periodic training of study directors as well as the scholars for standardization in research processes. This book describes different documents required at various time points of a successful Ph.D and post-doc tenure along with faculty training besides entire lab establishments. Various other areas including academic social responsibility and quality assurance in the developing world, lab orientations, and communication, digitization in data accuracy, auditability and back traceability have also been discussed. This book will be a preferred source for principal investigators, research scholars, and industrial research centers globally. From the foreword by Ratan Tata, India “This book will be a guide for students and professionals alike in quality assurance practices related to clinical research labs. The historical research and fundamental principles make it a good tool in clinical research environments. The country has a great need for such a compilation in order to increase the application of domestic capabilities and technology”

Metrology and Instrumentation: Practical Applications for Engineering and Manufacturing provides students and professionals with an accessible foundation in the metrology techniques, instruments, and governing standards used in mechanical engineering and manufacturing. The book opens with an overview of metrology units and scale, then moves on to explain topics such as sources of error, calibration systems, uncertainty, and dimensional, mechanical, and thermodynamic measurement systems. A chapter on tolerance stack-ups covers GD&T, ASME Y14.5-2018, and the ISO standard for general tolerances, while a chapter on digital measurements connects metrology to newer, Industry 4.0 applications.

This textbook covers all the steps in manufacturing a biomedical product from bench to bedside. It specifically focuses on quality assurance and management and explains the different good practice principles in the various phases of product development as well as how to fulfill them: Good laboratory practice, good manufacturing practice and good clinical practice. It provides readers with the know-how to design biomedical experiments to ensure quality and integrity, to plan and conduct standard preclinical studies and to assure the quality of the final manufactured biomedical products. Importantly, it also addresses ethical concerns and considerations. The book discusses the guidelines and ethical considerations for preclinical and clinical studies, to allow readers to identify safety concerns regarding biomedical products and to improve pre-clinical studies for the development of better products. This textbook is a valuable guide for biomedical students (B.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. students) in the field of molecular medicine, medical biotechnology, stem cell research and related areas, as well as for professionals such as quality control staff, tissue bankers, policy-makers and health professionals.

"This document provides updated tables for the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute antimicrobial susceptibility testing standards M02-A12, M07-A10, and M11-A8"--Cover.

In 1992 the National Research Council issued DNA Technology in Forensic Science, a book that documented the state of the art in this emerging field. Recently, this volume was brought to worldwide attention in the murder trial of celebrity O. J. Simpson. The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence reports on developments in population genetics and statistics since the original volume was published. The committee comments on statements in the original book that proved controversial or that have been misapplied in the courts. This volume offers recommendations for handling DNA samples, performing calculations, and other aspects of using DNA as a forensic toolâ€"modifying some recommendations presented in the 1992 volume. The update addresses two major areas: Determination of DNA profiles. The committee considers how laboratory errors (particularly false matches) can arise, how errors might be reduced, and how to take into account the fact that the error rate can never be reduced to zero. Interpretation of a finding that the DNA profile of a suspect or victim matches the evidence DNA. The committee addresses controversies in population genetics, exploring the problems that arise from the mixture of groups and subgroups in the American population and how this substructure can be accounted for in calculating frequencies. This volume examines statistical issues in interpreting frequencies as probabilities, including adjustments when a suspect is found through a database search. The committee includes a detailed discussion of what its recommendations would mean in the courtroom, with numerous case citations. By resolving several remaining issues in the evaluation of this increasingly important area of forensic evidence, this technical update will be important to forensic scientists and population geneticistsâ€"and helpful to attorneys, judges, and others who need to understand DNA and the law. Anyone working in laboratories and in the courts or anyone studying this issue should own this book.