After 13 years of programming, the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine’s (ADLM’s, formerly AACC’s) Latin America Working Group has contributed to ADLM’s strong relationship with laboratorians in the region. This year, three members of the group deepened those relationships at COLABIOCLI’s (Confederación Latinoamericano de Bioquímica Clinica) congress in Cartagena, Colombia.
The workshop attracted attendees from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and the United States and addressed challenges arising from the increased prevalence of point-of-care testing (POCT) outside of the traditional laboratory. Veronica Luzzi, PhD, points out that POCT’s use outside the lab “presents challenges for maintaining quality within the clinical laboratory.”
This is why Luzzi, Jessica Colon-Franco, PhD, and Juan David Garcia, MBA, presented on risk management with a focus on POC, emphasizing how best to handle risk, create a total quality control process, and understand quality beyond the walls of the laboratory. The Working Group was also able to learn from the audience, who described their current use of POCT in their home institutions.
Presentations and hands-on exercises solidified information and made for a lively environment, which continued on past the end of the workshop.
A thank you to Veronica Luzzi, PhD, MS, DABCC, FACB, for contributing background information to this article.
The ADLM/COLABIOCLI workshop was conducted as a part of the Global Lab Quality Initiative funded by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Any society interested in partnering on a similar workshop, please contact [email protected].