CLN Daily 2024
Effective medical care depends on laboratory quality, the guarantee that lab results are accurate, reproducible, and reliable. Lab quality itself, however, depends on the resources and expertise of a particular lab, as well as local regulations and laboratory practices, all of which can vary by country and region of the world.
Since its inception in 2010, the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM, formerly AACC) Global Lab Quality Initiative (GLQI) has partnered with the national societies of low- and middle-income countries to offer interactive workshops on lab quality control and method verification. Supported by a generous endowment from the Walter H. Coulter Foundation, GLQI has to date hosted 34 workshops in more than 20 countries, which together have been attended by nearly 5,000 people.
ADLM supports three working groups that serve GLQI, each with a distinct geographical focus: the Africa Working Group, the Asia-Pacific Working Group, and the Latin American Working Group. The working groups consist of ADLM members with laboratory expertise and strong ties to the region, who are well equipped to foster partnerships between ADLM and local societies and collaborate with laboratorians to advance the quality of laboratory testing in diverse local and national settings.
As part of ADLM’s continued efforts to serve the entire global laboratory medicine community, the GLQI working groups are as busy as ever, educating, learning from, and engaging with laboratorians across the world.
Two recent GLQI workshops illustrate the impact GLQI has had in laboratories across diverse settings. In April 2024, the Africa Working Group hosted a workshop in Ethiopia in partnership with the Ethiopian Medical Laboratory Association and Ethiopian Society of Pathology. Merih Tesfazghi, PhD, DABCC, director of core laboratory services at Rush University Medical Center and member of the Africa Working Group, attended the workshop and shared insights into quality assessment programs and quality strategies.
He also helped raise awareness about clinical pathology programs. Ethiopia currently does not offer a clinical pathology rotation as part of residency programs, and the Ethiopian societies that partnered with ADLM were interested in learning more about this area.
“This is a request that came from them,” Tesfazghi said. “They wanted us to talk about the role of clinical pathology in healthcare.”
Tesfazghi emphasized, however, that GLQI workshops are bidirectional: when ADLM members meet with local laboratorians, there is always a two-way exchange of knowledge.
“It is a collaboration,” Tesfazghi said of the workshops he’s been a part of. “We work together to identify areas of interest,” and workshops often involve everyone “sharing their practice and day-to-day life in the lab,” which allows all involved to learn from one another, Tesfazghi added.
Jessica Colón-Franco, PhD, current member and incoming Chair of the Latin American Working Group, echoed these sentiments. “There’s momentum that comes with a gathering of laboratory professionals,” she said. “When they all get together to talk about quality, they realize the challenges they’re encountering and they can exchange notes and experiences, and hopefully it plants the seed to start something locally.”
Colón-Franco recently spent a week in Ecuador, a high-priority country for GLQI activities. She visited eight different laboratories, worked with local laboratorians to conduct a needs assessment, and gave talks on quality control and method verification. She found that, though some laboratories in Ecuador lack certain resources, they have strengths compared to some better-resourced labs, such as fewer staffing shortages.
“They don’t seem to experience shortages the same way we [in the U.S.] seem to experience personnel challenges,” Colón-Franco noted.
These events were organized in partnership with the national societies Latin American Confederation of Clinical Biochemistry (COLABIOCLI), with which ADLM signed a memorandum of understanding in July 2023. The agreement established a collaborative relationship between the two organizations whereby ADLM will consult with COLABIOCLI when developing academic and training activities for the latter’s member countries.
In addition to GLQI’s educational portfolio, an increasingly large aspect of its activities are efforts aimed at improving laboratory medicine funding and resources in diverse national contexts. For instance, as part of a 2023 GLQI workshop in Cameroon, Tesfazghi and fellow Africa Working Group member Anne Tebo, PhD, met with directors of several Cameroonian laboratories to help them define ways in which more administrative support can be provided. The conference was organized in partnership with the Cameroon Ministry of Public Health.
“Lab medicine requires advocacy, and it requires us to join hands in achieving it,” Tesfazghi said. In Ethiopia, Tesfazghi and others met with an administrator of one of the country’s biggest hospitals to discuss the role of the lab in patient care. He hopes these conversations will continue to remain a priority in future GLQI events.
The next GLQI workshop will take place in Zambia, with Nigeria and Brazil in sight for future GLQI events. The continued growth and success of GLQI exemplify ADLM’s leadership in the global laboratory medicine community and its work towards improving health for patients across the world.
“As we become a more global organization, GLQI becomes a greater part of our identity,” Colón-Franco said.