Proficiency Tests

Purpose

An important function and duty of the European Union Reference Laboratory is to periodically organise comparative tests for EU National Reference Laboratories to assess their ability to identify the notifiable diseases and other important diseases. In this context it must be emphasised that inter-laboratory comparative tests are being carried out for various reasons such as:

• to determine the capability of a laboratory to conduct specific diagnostic tests
• to check or certify the performance of individual operators
• to check or certify the calibration of instrumentation
• to harmonise existing test methods
• to evaluate new test methods
• to assign values and ranges to standard materials
• to resolve inter-laboratory differences