EQUIPMENT CALIBRATION
Who calibrates the equipment in your laboratory? Is there a national institution that is responsible for calibrating laboratory equipment? How affordable and accessible is their services?
Who calibrates the equipment in your laboratory? Is there a national institution that is responsible for calibrating laboratory equipment? How affordable and accessible is their services?
Comments
Equipment calibration is one of the biggest challenges in my facility. The Ghana Standard Authority is the sole mandated agency to do calibration in Ghana. However the charges are very expensive so we depend on donor support to be able to meet equipment calibration which is one of the vital requirement of ISO 15189
There is National Metrology Institute accredited to ISO 17025, There are other privates companies offering calibration services however we don't work with them since they are not accredited to ISO 17025.
it depends on the type of equipment. For analytic equipment, the vendor that manages the equipment usually have some contract and if calibration is needed, it is authomatically done. For ancillary equipment, they are carried out by a licenced vendor that posesses the required certification with some traceability
Firstly, before I jump in, let me say that the issue of laboratory quality management must be consider from a holistic point with the national government taking the lead (commitment) in line with responsible units within the ministry of health or other collaborating agencies. In my laboratory in Liberia, equipment calibration remains the number one (1) challenge in addressing section five (5) of the ISO-15189-2012 checklist and the standard. There is a BIOMEDICAL TECHNICIAN in my assigned area that has no formal training in calibration. Donors, partners and government institutions who make donation/purchase with/of equipment at facilities and are not accompanied by service engineer or service contract who will installed and run calibration of the equipment. The partner/government places high demand on facility to utilize the equipment when processes for using the equipment were not followed. Please note* A bench technician is as good with his/her report on the basic of the right sample collected, right sample processing and all the stages of workflow (PoW). Therefore, any equipment that must function well will need to go through all the require stages of accepting equipment at lab facility. In so doing the date of installation is captured, calibration date is captured, next maintenance schedules can be develop, for the longevity of the equipment, correctness of results, prevent accident and prevent erroneous results that could lead to the death of the patient.
I share the above comments by colleagues , by vendor for those closed system analyzers,National Metrology Institute and privates companies also offering calibration services for ancillary equipments , providers are accredited to ISO 17025 :2017 in Ethiopia .