When did the US become irrelevant to Quality Goal Setting?

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

In the recent Milan conference, there were over 200 participants but only around 10 participants from the US, and none of the speakers were from the US. What's happened?

Of course, if the European Federation of Laboratory Medicine schedules a meeting on Thanksgiving week, that's probably going to depress the American turnout. But still, it was a rather poor showing of the US.

But if you consider that the main focus of the last two years in the US on IQCPs, which are about reducing QC frequency and effort, while the EFLM meeting, if it was about anything, was about tightening goals and making more stringent quality specifications, you can see that there's a growing chasm between the two regions. In the US, the pressure is on to reduce QC to its bare minimum. Europe, to its credit, still strives for a professionalism in quality.