Maintaining Quality in Laboratory Medicine

Point of Care Services

Logistics

Over 500 packages are sent weekly to our Laboratory clients, with variable and multiple sample requirements with additional 500 to 1000 packages distributed to our POCT clients every fortnight.  Again each package will differ in quantity of samples.  We have a dedicated team of 4 Healthcare Assistants who are supervised by a Healthcare Scientist to deal with Logistics issues.  Each EQA pack is packaged according to IATA Packaging instruction 650 and sent out by 1^st class Royal Mail.  Each site will be issued with a six month plan of distribution dates (when to expect the samples) and return dates (when to send in the result).  For sites outside the UK (in the republic of Ireland), samples are sent by AirSure and a tracking system is employed. 

Software licence

The website software is a customised package provided by Cuesee.bv. 

Training

Documentation on how to use the EQA material will be distributed with the sample.  Additional training documents will be provided to all sites on how to access the website, enter their results and retrieve their reports.  WEQAS can also provide training days on POCT best practice and use of the EQA website at an additional cost.