The World Health Organization's role and future plans in laboratory standardization

WHO is monitoring health care and the status of health of the population in each of its member states. The statistics provides valuable information for the comparison of the effectiveness of different health systems. As part of its global responsibility on health WHO issues international reference materials (IRMs), assigns international nonproprietary names for therapeutics (INNs), publishes guidelines for good manufacturing practice (GMP) and good laboratory practice (GLP) and, in collaboration with international professional organizations, makes recommendations towards achieving global harmonization of clinical laboratory investigations.