

UK NEQAS Parasitology was inspected by UKAS from 4 to 6 September, 2017. UKAS inspected all the current schemes offered by Parasitology i.e. Faecal Parasitology, Blood Parasitology, Toxoplasma Serology, Parasite Serology and Malaria Rapid. In addition, UKAS inspected the team for new premises (as the lab has moved to the Halo building), use of new analyte for Malaria Rapid (freeze dried blood) and one new scheme (Malaria Molecular that was launched in January 2016). The team successfully cleared all assessments and UKAS accreditation is maintained subject to addressing the findings. Similarly the new extensions to scope and the new scheme have also been given approval subject to addressing the findings.
Changes in repeats provision

Professor Peter L Chiodini attended the Excellence in Healthcare (June 2017) conference in Glasgow. He presented a poster on behalf of UK NEQAS Parasitology “The first malaria Molecular EQA scheme launched UK NEQAS Parasitology”. The poster was short listed for best poster award at the meeting.
Agatha Saez attended the EQALM (October 2017) meeting in Dublin. She presented a poster titled “Launch of the new Malaria Molecular EQA scheme”. Her poster gave details of the rationale of the scheme, the data generated during the pilot stages and also the first data from the live stages of the scheme.
Jaya Shrivastava attended the ECTMIH (October 2017) held in Antwerp. She headed and organised a session on “Raising standards and quality of Parasite diagnostics in non-endemic clinical settings using molecular and lateral flow technologies.” The session had international speakers from Europe and USA. The panel was comprised of expert Parasitologists with added unique know-how in the field of molecular and rapid diagnostic assays and running the relevant EQA schemes. Jaya presented a talk on the UK NEQAS Malaria molecular scheme with a special highlight on samples that the participants struggled with.
Jaya Shrivastava attended the ASTMH (November 2017) held in Baltimore, USA. She chaired the session on “Malaria: Enhancing and optimizing Quality of care”. She also presented a talk on “Development of the WHO international EQA scheme for Malaria Nucleic Acid Amplification techniques.” The talk highlighted the launch of the WHO Malaria Molecular scheme and presented rationale of the scheme plus the data from the first round of distribution and the associated challenges.
For three days (February 2017), UK NEQAS was hosted by our distributor Genetrics in Dubai, where we had the opportunity to understand the relationship between our participants and our distributor.
The next day we visited some participants in the beautiful city of Oman to answer their queries on the services provided and promote prospective EQA programmes. Finally we travelled to Kuwait that evening to conduct three workshops on UK NEQAS for Microbiology Scheme Best Practices, Good laboratory Practice and Total Quality Management the following afternoon. The audience comprised of various levels of experienced scientific staff and clinicians and the presentations were received within an interactive forum. We travelled back that same evening, tired but with a positive feedback from all we had visited.
UK NEQAS Microbiology (Shila Seaton) attended the annual international meeting in Vienna. As many as 12,494 specialists from 127 countries attended with more than 3,000 abstracts presented at the congress in oral sessions, as posters or e-Posters. We were successful to present two posters. One was on the collaborative exercise with ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) illustrating results from the 2016 antimicrobial susceptibility testing external quality assessment (EQA) exercise organised for EARS-Net Participants.
The other poster was on the development of a UK NEQAS EQA scheme: Galactomannan antigen detection in clinical specimens to aid diagnosis of Invasive Aspergillosis disease. The EARS-Net poster was selected as an e-poster and provided the option for delegates to view the poster throughout the duration of the conference. The EQA on galactomannan detection study was presented as a paper poster and this provided an excellent opportunity to meet with delegates and potential participants. The main objective was to present our work but also have the occasion to attend the multitude of presentations on topics of interest.
November has been a busy month with visits to our distributors to meet our participants in Kuwait, Italy and Israel. In Kuwait we gave a workshop to our participants followed by a Q&A session, whilst in Israel we presented at The Workshop on QC Programs in Clinical Microbiology, held in Tel Aviv. The workshops were well- attended and this was a marvellous opportunity for us to meet face-to-face with both our participants and distributors, as well as answer their queries directly rather than via email or telephone.
Mahmood Sadigh (IT Manager) and Vipul Sharma (Operations Manager) took the opportunity to visit Thermo Fisher Scientific our Italian distributor based in Rodano, Milan. We were able to discuss ideas and improvement’s to our re-registration processes, customer queries, password problems, general website questions and Marketing opportunities. Ideas on how to gain more interest from new Italy laboratories for UK NEQAS and enhance communications with participants in relation to overall processes. The face to face meeting allowed us to further build on an existing strong relationship encouraging more interaction and benefits for both Thermo Fisher Scientific and NEQAS.
UKNEQAS were invited by Thermo Fisher Scientific to be part of a team of representatives at a stand at the Italian Congress of Clinical Microbiology in Rimini on the 12-13 November 2017.
Thermo Fisher Scientific is the sole distributor of UK NEQAS schemes and supplies our EQA to over 300 participating laboratories across Italy. Two members of the UK NEQAS team (Shila Seaton and Manpreet Sahni) were able to meet with several of the Thermo Fisher team as well as speak to participants first hand regarding their participation and any queries.
The presence of UK NEQAS was very well received by a Congress of over 500 delegates. We were able to deal with queries regarding the website, technical queries, performance analysis and returning of results, as well as meet many of our participants and gain invaluable feedback. Many participants embraced the presence of the UK NEQAS team, and the response from the Italian distributors was a very positive one and we hope this relationship of UK NEQAS and laboratory quality assessment long continues.
UK NEQAS would like to thank the Italian Thermo Fisher Scientific team for inviting us to be part of the congress and being able to witness the first snowfall in Italy in November, something that has not been seen in many years.
New online re-registration process for April 2018 to March 2019 for UK participants and overseas laboratories not served by distributors
UK NEQAS: Coordinating Point of Care Testing
A similar meeting on POCT will be held in 2018. Watch this space!
UK NEQAS Annual Consortium meeting:
Better tests, better outcomes
Overview
What a Day! Pavandeep Singh Chahal
Placement student, UK NEQAS for Microbiology
Save the date
We are looking forward to seeing you at our next meeting in Central London on
30 November 2018 the theme is to be announced.
New Staff
Yonas Legesse – Healthcare Scientist
Kimberley Pandian – Healthcare Scientist Support Worker
David Lloyd – Healthcare Scientist Support Worker
Pavandeep Chahal – Placement student
The Operations’ team members are:
Mr Ushmanthe Arachchige
Mrs Rinu Bandopadhyay
Mrs Nazma Kadri
Mrs Vay Mistry
Mr Vipul Sharma
Please contact our Operations team if you have any customer queries on: organiser@ukneqasmicro.org.uk