The Japanese CCLS was established only 4
years ago. Their publications are written in
Japanese. Sametimes there is an English sum–
mary and some of their publications may well
be of value for us in Europe.
I won't say much about ECCLS but point
out that in the byelaws it is stated that ECCLS
shall engage in written standards. During 'the
last years there have been several proposals
for engagement in material standards but they
have always been rejected by the Board.
REFERENCE MATERIALS
In Europe certified reference materials are
produced and assigned values under direction
of BCR in Brussels. BCR, the Community
Bureau of Reference, belongs to the European
Community's Directorate General for Sci–
ence, Research and Development. Within
BCR there are 4 departments for chemical
analyses, one of them for "biomedicals".
For some years 3 lyophilized sera with as–
signed values for calcium, for lead and cadmi–
um, and for cortisol respectively as well as
alkaline phosphatase and gamma-GT from pig
kidney have been available, but BCR has only
got a few orders. Several other reference mate–
rials for clinical chemistry is under-way but
there is a risk that BCR will divert their mon–
ey away from clinical chemistry to food and
environment.
In the US some reference materials for clini–
cal chemistry have been produced by the Na–
tional Bureau of Standards, which recently
changed its name to NIST, the National Insti–
tute for Standards and Technology.
In 1984 CAP, the College of American Pa–
thologists, published a seeond edition of a
guide called Standards, Reference Materials
and Methods for the Medical Laboratory.
lt
is
26
out-dated and CAP plans to revise it. In
France the Laboratoire National d'Essais has
started a data bank on reference materials.
IMLIS AND CGSCLS
I will finish with a few words on IMLIS, the
International Medical Laboratory Informa–
tion System and -on CGSCLS, the Co-ordinat–
ing Group for standards in Clinical Laborato–
ry Sciences.
The IMLIS project aims at a regular updat–
ing of all sorts of informations in standardiza–
tion for clinical laboratories. IMLIS was
planned l
O
years ago but only in the spring of
1990 a home was found for the project at
WHO-EURO in Copenhagen. Dr Adam Ul–
dall will be in charge of the project which will
start by listing organisations and activities in
Quality Assurance especially Externat Quality
Assessment. Although the emphasis in the be–
ginning will be in Europe the IMLIS project
will cover world-wide.
The idea behind the Co-ordinating Group
for Standards in Clinical Laboratory Sciences
is to bring together representatives for impor–
tant organizations in order to co-ordinate
their overlapping interests in standardization.
The decision to have such a group was made
in April 1988, when the ECCLS Executive
Committee and the IFCC Executive Board
met to discuss cc-operation in order to avoid
duplication of efforts in standardizing, it was
agreed that we might invite other societies to
join in a Co-ordinating Group for standards
in Clinical Laboratory Sciences. At the
ECCLS meeting in Coventry in May 1989 re–
presentatives for international and European
organisations agreed to supply the IMLIS pro–
ject with all required information once every
year.
Klinisk kemi
i
Norden
