A 10-year retrospective--from the achievement of ISO 15189 accreditation toward the next stage--chairman's introductory remarks

More than 10 years have passed since ISO 15189 was issued in February 2003, and ISO 15189:2012 (bilingual edition published in April 2013) was issued in November 2012. In order to provide useful laboratory services, standardizing examination results performed by medical laboratories is very important. The accreditation of medical laboratories is one of the way to implement such standardization. After publishing ISO 15189 in 2003, many economies started the accreditation program for medical laboratories using its criteria. There are 5,500 accredited medical laboratories in the world, including 2,200 accredited in the Asia-pacific region. In Japan, the JAB (Japan Accreditation Board) started its accreditation service in August 2005. The service is now in its eighth year. As of the end of fiscal year (FY) 2013, the total number of accredited medical laboratories was 69, consisting of 18 university hospitals, 2 clinical trial laboratories, 3 health-checking laboratories, 12 other medical institutes, and 34 registered clinical laboratories. In this symposium, we look back over the more than 10 years since ISO 15189 was issued, and subjects of speeches entitled 'the next stage' will be given by five speakers.