Danish Institute for External Quality Assurance for Laboratories in Health Care, DEKS
DEKS, 54 M1 Herlev University Hospital, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark.
Email: deks@deks.dk

Danish Institute of External Quality Assurance for Laboratories in Health Care, DEKS, is a non-profit organisation owned by the Copenhagen County on behalf of all other counties in Denmark. DEKS is situated in the University Hospital Herlev, on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

History

External Quality Assurance (EQA) for clinical biochemistry, including routine coagulation and haematology has up to 1996 been conducted by the Committee on Analytical Quality under the Danish Society of Clinical Chemistry. These activities was transferred to public ownership by the formation of DEKS by the Council of Copenhagen County by January 1996.

Aim

The aim of DEKS is to facilitatequality improvements of results from clinical laboratories. DEKS gives objective information and advice to clinical laboratories throughout laboratory medicine on EQA.

Participants

DEKS is serving a total of 264 medicallaboratories (2002). The distribution of the different kind of laboratories is shown in table 1. The majority of the clinical laboratories are clinical biochemistry laboratories including haematology and coagulation. Several laboratories also include blood banks. 19 are clinical immunology or blood banks, and 14 are clinical microbiology laboratories. Laboratories participating in EQA schemes obtain an independent documentation of their quality. This documentation is wanted in most laboratories and mandatory for accredited laboratories.

Table 1 shows the types and numbers of medical laboratories served by DEKS in 2002. Note that the majority (156 of 264 ) of participating laboratories are hospital laboratories.

Types of laboratories	Number of laboratories
Danish hospital laboratories	156
General practitioners (laboratories)	6
Laboratories in Greenland and on the Faroe Islands	12
Other Nordic hospital laboratories	79
Laboratories in other foreign countries	4
Laboratories in Institutes and private organisations	7
Total:	264

Services provided by DEKS

Alone and in collaboration with other countriesDEKS offers a variety of educational EQA schemes, calibration materials and reference materials. DEKS also provides know-how to the participants. In 2002 30 EQA schemes were organised by DEKS e.g. control for Elisa Reader Photometry, and control for Homocysteine & Methylmalonic acid, hematology schemes and coagulation schemes. 194 EQA-schemes were organised by other countries through DEKS: Sweden, Finland, Norway, United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. DEKS also offers calibration material of several difficult quantities e.g. HbA₁C and ISI, commutable with clinical samples. Also a variety of reference materials and certified reference materials are available through DEKS e.g. from NIST, USA and from IRMM (Institute for Reference Materials and Measurement), Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. DEKS manufactures unmodified fresh frozen human control serum, either as EQA samples or reference serum. Calibration materials for INR are also manufactured by DEKS.

DEKS Users Meeting

Once a year DEKS conducts a Users Meeting, where approximately 340-380 Danish physicians, scientists and medical laboratory technicians participate. The meeting includes about 60 presentations given by Danish or international speakers organised in about 12 sessions. The sessions usually cover quality assurance in molecular biology, clinical biochemistry, clinical immunology, clinical microbiology general practitioners laboratory, and general issues e.g. quality requirement, metrological traceability, IVD-MD directive and latest projects in laboratory medicine.

Organisation

DEKS has a board chaired by a representative of the administrative head of the University Hospital Herlev. The board members include representatives from Danish Society of Clinical Biochemistry, Danish Society of Clinical Immunology, Danish Society of Microbiology and Danish Society of General Medicine. The staff of DEKS is comprised by a director, a deputy director, one chemist, two secretaries and two laboratory technicians. Furthermore, DEKS is supported by scientific specialists who are attached to DEKS’ quality assurance schemes either as scheme organisers or as scheme advisers. The specialists are mostly employed in other Danish hospital laboratories.

Projects and Committees

DEKS is involved in many projects solely as well as jointly. DEKS is aiming at an accreditation after the ILAC-G13:2000. DEKS is also working with issues like application of IFCC-IUPAC code system e.g. to improve comparison of components in EQA schemes, and application of the CE-marking and other implications of the IVD-MD directive. DEKS is involved in the development of scientific projects in collaboration with international committees e.g. IRMM (IMEP17) and Nordic Society for Clinical Chemistry (Nordic Reference Interval Project, NORIP).

In the Nordic countries, EQA organisers have since 1993 had a special collaborating committee: EQAnord, External Quality Assurance in the Nordic Countries.

Furthermore, DEKS is member of the European Committee of External Quality Assurance Programme in Laboratory medicine (EQALM) and is editing the EQALM website. DEKS is active in the area of standardisation through committee work in Danish Standards Association, and is also working in committees dealing with issues concerning quality and regulation in health care.

DEKS has its own website at www.deks.dk with information and latest news.