European Communities Confederation of Clinical Chemistry Working Group on Accreditation: past, present and future

During the past 10 years, many activities have taken place in the field of quality systems and accreditation in medical laboratories. Each country in Europe has a slightly different approach. The Working Group on Accreditation of the European Communities Confederation of Clinical Chemistry (EC4) tries to support harmonisation of these efforts. For this purpose, they edited the Essential Criteria for quality systems of medical laboratories and supported the forthcoming International ISO standard "Quality management for the medical laboratory". At this moment, a Model Quality Manual is nearly ready for publication. The next items are setting up criteria for auditing the quality system and criteria for the accreditation process.