Klinisk Biokemi i Norden · 4 2016
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Why you should participate
in an international organisation
Sverre Sandberg
EFLM President
Why work in an international
organisation?
When I started in the laboratory
profession, I was told that to parti-
cipate in the big international orga-
nisations was a waste of time, it was
cumbersome and it was difficult to
make progress. Big international
meetings seldom came up with new ideas and it was
always the same good, old guys that were talking.
Instead, you were advised to participate in small dedi-
cated scientific meetings where new information was
launched and where you could discuss with people
devoted to the same (small) research area that you
yourself focused on.
Then, I decided to play part in the organisation of a
course in systematic reviewing and after that in 1995
ErikMagid fromDenmark, then chair of the Education
andManagement Division in IFCC asked if I wanted to
chair a new committee in systematic reviewing – later
named the Committee for Evidence-Based Laboratory
Medicine. After expressing my hesitation, he said
that it was a great opportunity if I wanted to change
something in laboratory medicine, meet clever people
and he told me that if I joined I would never regret it.
I said “yes” - and I never regretted it.
What is the EFLM?
In 2007, the European Federation of Clinical
Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM, for-
merly EFCC) was formed by the merger of the FESCC
(Forum of European Societies of Clinical Chemistry)
and the EC4 (European Communities Confederation
of Clinical Chemistry). EFLM connects the Natio-
nal Societies of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory
Medicine for all over Europe and creates a platform
for all specialists working in this field. The mission
of EFLM is to 1) enhance patient care, 2) improve
outcomes by promoting and improving the scien-
tific, professional and clinical aspects of clinical
chemistry and laboratory medicine and 3) to ensure
effective representation of laboratory medicine both
at a European Union level and to other pan-European
and sub-regional bodies.
So since I am, since March this year, president
of the EFLM, the aim of this article is to tell you
something about this organisation and how I see it in
the future. The EFLM is one of the six regional fede-
rations of IFCC and represents the IFCC in Europe.
The EFLM has 40 member states and represents about
22 000 specialists in laboratory medicine. About 180
persons (for some reason called “officers” in the offi-
cial EFLM language) work voluntarily for the EFLM.
There are five committees working on the following
areas; communication, education and training, pro-
fession; quality and regulations, and science. Each
of the committees has several working groups (WG)
and Task and Finish Groups (TFG). In addition, the
EFLM has one Task Force of Performance Specifica-
tion in Laboratory Medicine with five TFG groups.
You can find more information about this of this on
IFCC has for many years been active especially in
the analytical field, e.g. on standardization, reference
methods and other basic topics. EFLM did not want
to overlap with IFCC and has therefore concentrated
its work on areas where the IFCC has not been so
active. In essence, EFLM is in many settings concen-
trating on the interphase between the laboratory and
the clinician. And I think this is where laboratory
medicine needs to intensify its work. Illustrating
this focus of the EFLM is that among the first WGs
to be generated, were the WGs on the pre-analytical
phase, the post-analytical phase, test evaluation and
on guidelines. Later, among other, WGs for patient
focused medicine and personalised medicine have
