The History of QCMD | |
QCMD evolved from the successful European Union Concerted Action programmes which were initiated in the early 1990s to address quality control within the clinical diagnosis of viral Meningitis
and Encephalitis. The EQA programmes where expanded in 1998 through the establishment of a European Union funded project Quality Control Concerted Action (EU-QCCA). This enabled the issues of quality and standardisation to be reviewed in the wider context of diagnostic clinical virology and microbiology through the provision of QC material, proficiency testing (PT) or external quality assessment (EQA), and consensus best practice approaches. One of the principal objectives of the EU-QCCA was to provide a mechanism for the long-term continuation of the international programmes. Quality Control for Molecular Diagnostics (QCMD) was founded in June 2001 to continue and expand the work as an independent provider of External Quality Assessment programmes for molecular diagnostics. |