Laboratories performing tests on moulds from the indoor and outdoor environment should meet high quality standards. They can assess their identification skills of fungi, participating in Sciensano’s Medical Mycology program. In Belgium, Sciensano organises of the External Quality Assessment (EQA) of laboratories for moulds species identification from both indoor and outdoor environment.
This EQA is mainly informative and is designed to evaluate the quality and homogeneity of laboratory results. Therefore, the participating laboratories receive four times per year a set of four cultures (from the BCCM/IHEM collection) to be identified at the genus or species level. A report with the results and didactic sheets on the species are provided to the participating laboratories following each test. That way, the EQA allows a participating laboratory to assess their performance in comparison to its peers or to accuracy based reference systems. EQA never replaces the internal Quality Assessment and Management System of the laboratory.
Ann Packeu for more information.