Internal quality assessment and genotyping error investigation in SNP microarray testing: Lessons from the ESWG-ISFG forensic proficiency trial

Cambodia's higher education institutions focus quality improvement. As a result, this research investigates quality enhancement for long-term growth at private higher education institutions (HEIs) in North-Eastern Cambodia, with a particular emphasis on graduate quality and labor market skill mismatches. The major purpose was to look at quality management components that encourage HEI quality improvement. A cross-sectional quantitative technique was used to collect data from 384 respondents. The theoretical framework specifies Quality Management, Quality in Education, Enhancement, Quality Assurance, and Quality Assessment, with an emphasis on curriculum standards, qualified individuals, and effective leadership. The findings revealed overwhelmingly positive perceptions of various quality management dimensions, including educational management, academic curriculum, academic staff and teaching strategies, student assessment, facilities and support staff, collaborations, financial management, internal quality assessment, and external quality assessment. Predictors accounted for 84.5% of the variation in HEI Quality Enhancement (R-squared =.845, p <.001). Student assessment had the most beneficial influence, followed by internal and external quality assessments, facilities and support personnel, and partnerships. Correlation analysis found significant dependency among these factors. A SWOT analysis identified strengths (internal quality assurance, leadership), weaknesses (resource constraints, data management), opportunities (external validation, collaboration), and threats (regulatory changes, economic pressures). This study highlights the need of quality improvement in Cambodian higher education institutions (HEIs), focusing on student evaluation, quality assurance, infrastructure, and strategic alliances. Future research should focus on multicollinearity, factors having non-significant effects, and bigger qualitative or comparative investigations.

Quality improvement is critical for both public and private colleges in Cambodia. The purpose of this study is to identify common quality management practices in Cambodian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), measure the relationships between quality management and quality assessments (internal and external), and evaluate the relationships between quality assessments and HE quality enhancement. A quantitative research approach was used in this study to evaluate the factors between quality enhancement and quality management for their significant implications. This study used simple and multivariate regressions to look at how quality assurance variables affect higher education quality. The study developed accurate questionnaires for 337 people from Cambodia's private and public higher education colleges and institutes, including academics and management staff. According to the findings, the majority of institutions regarded academic curriculum, facilities, educational management, academic staff and teaching methodologies, and student evaluation as critical quality management measures. However, they placed less emphasis on cooperation. The multiple regression analysis revealed that factors related to internal quality assessment (IQA), external quality assessment (EQA), and HE quality enhancement were consistent, indicating that academic curriculum, student assessment, facilities, support staff, and collaborations were potential factors for improving higher education quality. The emphasis on Internal Quality Assessment (IQA) and External Quality Assessment (EQA) resulted in dramatically enhanced higher education quality. Highly ranked institutions tended to have a better IQA and EQA system, and IQA and EQA played an important role in conducting frequent examinations of quality management methods.

Though internal quality and standards assessments has the potential to improve the academic achievement of public secondary schools, there are no clearly laid down procedures on how to manage internal quality standards in public secondary schools in Kakamega county. Consequently, the structures and procedures that are followed during the external quality and standards assessments are absent in the internal quality and standards assessments. The problem then is that internal quality and standards assessments are not taken seriously in public secondary schools in Kakamega County. This study specifically sought to analyse the principals’ and deputy principals’ perceptions on the effect of quality control practices on the academic achievement of public secondary in schools Kakamega County, Kenya. The study was guided by School-Based Management Theory. A descriptive research design was used. The target population was 415 principals and 415 Deputy Principals. Stratified and purposive sampling technique was used. The sample comprised of; One hundred principals, 100 deputy principals. The research instruments were; Questionnaires and interview schedule. Descriptive analysis was done using frequencies and percentages while inferential analysis was performed using Chi-square Analysis and Pearson product moment. The chi-square analysis revealed no significant difference in stakeholder’s perceptions on the effect of schools' quality control practices and academic performance in public secondary schools in Kakamega County, Kenya at a p value p > 0.05. In conclusion the stakeholders perceived that internal quality and standards assessments in secondary schools in Kakamega county Kenya made a difference in academic achievement of learners. The study recommended that a personnel in charge of quality and standards assessment be posted in schools to do the monitoring, reporting and follow ups of recommendations on quality and in public secondary schools in Kakamega County.

Trauma surgery and orthopedic trauma surgery have been accompanied not only by internal quality assessment, but also by external quality assessment procedures right from the beginning. The reasons for these mechanisms were based on legal regulations of treatment of work-related accidents. In 1958, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthese (Working Group on Osteosynthesis, AO group) was founded. The results of the AO's scientific activities built the basis of osteosyntheses. In 1988, legal regulations changed again in Germany. Since this reform of some important facets of public health care, each hospital or institution is committed to perform external and internal quality assessment. In addition, the introduction of a payment system based on diagnosis-related groups makes it necessary to install basic quality management systems within the next few years. This paper presents some well-established procedures, especially the diagnosis-related study in the whole district of Westphalia-Lippe. The aim of the study was a quality assessment of the treatment of intracapsular fractures of the collum of the femur. Problems in data analysis and interpretation are shown. Because of some grave problems, certain changes in the study design seem to be warranted. Despite these facts, however, we are convinced that we not only need this kind of quality assessment, but that we should try to expand these studies based on the experiences we gained.

The models of Internal Audit Quality Assessment are developed on the basis of the conceptual framework of the International Standards on Internal Audit, the Code of Ethics, the approved internal regulations for each public sector organization, and are based on established traditions and practical experience. For this reason, internal audit quality assessment models are diverse in their type and nature. The model is a projection of the objective reality (Elliott et al. 2007), therefore, the models always change and refine, according to the change of the environment, yet they present the best and most current practice as a way of determining the state of the organization, on the one hand, and establishing the nature of the activity of internal audit, on the other hand. The model should present the interrelationship among the different factors, present the specifics and the nature of the object.

The article presents the quality assurance of higher education in France and reveals the system structure peculiar features. The authors characterize the activity of national agencies for external and internal quality assessment. We show that the formation of French quality assurance in higher education has lasted for three decades. The periodization of the quality assurance shaping in higher education is determined based on reforming the principal national agency for quality. The article illustrates the national legislative documents that regulate external and internal French quality assurance. We believe that a specific feature of the French system of quality assurance in higher education is its subordination to agencies (ENQA and EQAR) at the EU level. The article reveals that the French system of quality assurance in higher education is regulated by legal documents («Standards and recommendations for quality assurance in the EHEA»(ESG)) at the European level; a number of national laws, including the Law on Finance (2001), the Law on Freedom and Responsibility of Universities (2007), the Law on Higher Education and Research (2013); national recommendations and handbooks that form the norms and procedures for assessing the quality of universities. Higher education quality assurance is provided through external assessment and internal self-assessment by universities at the national level. The specificity of the French external quality assessment system’s structure lies in the variety of external agencies and their powers. The High Council for Evaluation in Research and Higher Education (Hcéres) is an independent body. The others external agencies are the Inspectorate General for Public Administration of Education and Training (IGAENR), the Commission of Chartered Engineers (CTI), the Commission for the Evaluation of Management Training and Diplomas (CEFDG) and the Advisory National Commission of University Institutes of Technology (CCN-IUT). National external assessment agencies have a sectoral focus and work in a specific segment, relying on internal quality control procedures. Internal self-assessment is mandatory for all French universities that issue state-recognized diplomas.

T05-P-09 Penile implants: 10 years of experience of a single centre

‘Fifteen percent of microbiology reports are wrong!’: further experience with an internal quality assessment and audit scheme

The main purpose of quality assurance procedures in clinical laboratories is to ensure that test results are appropriate to maintain excellence in the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of disease. However, in current practice, no standardized procedure or frequency for the evaluation of methods exists, particularly in external quality assessment. Furthermore, different quality control materials are typically used for internal and external quality assessment. To overcome these discrepancies, we used samples with the same matrix for both internal and external quality assessments of a group test performed in our laboratory. We then calculated total error using real bias (target value obtained by reference method) and the imprecision of each test and compared our results with the total error allowable, derived from biological variation data. We suggest that the strategy of using the same matrix samples for both internal and external quality assessment is cost-effective, can be readily used by staff, and will facilitate the standardization of quality control in clinical laboratories.

To develop an internal quality assessment (IQA) scheme in a clinical bacteriology laboratory. Over 24 months, 1230 diagnostic specimens, representing 0.42% of laboratory workload, were anonymised and resubmitted for analysis. Six hundred and twenty one (48.7%) of these gave positive culture results; 44 fecal and upper respiratory specimens were "spiked" (artificially inoculated) to increase the proportion of positive samples. Discrepancies between IQA and clinical sample results occurred in 188 cases (14.8%): 76.6% of these were in culture results, 13.3% in microscopy performance, and 10.1% in clerical recording. The culture discrepancy rate for each positive sample was lowest for wound (17.5%) and urine (18.1%) specimens, and highest for faeces (34.9%) and upper respiratory (37.7%) samples. Discrepancies in several areas responded to staff training and improvement in technical methods. An IQA programme of this type assesses the reproducibility of tests within a diagnostic laboratory when analysing common specimen types and organisms. It permits blind assessment of many areas of diagnostic work that are not readily amenable to other quality assurance methods, and it raises the awareness of all staff to the importance of quality in every aspect of specimen and data processing.

The quality assessment is an essential step in the software development process; it takes place previous and after the development. Internal quality is a set of characteristics from an internal approach in the software such as requirements, UML diagrams, and the code. These characteristics are constant during the software life cycle. The external quality metrics are the ones that require the end product and, in many cases, the users involvement. Several authors stated that the external quality of the product is related to the assurance of the internal quality of the project. For that reason, this study proposes a framework for assessing the internal quality of user stories to improve the external quality of the project deliveries. The internal quality assessment is based on the grammatical structure of the user stories, and the external quality considers the functionality and usability of the product deliveries. The experiment for validating the framework was conducted with 19 developers considering three different projects which gathered 46 user stories. The findings suggest that the presence of adjectives in user stories improves the usability and the correctness of the product is related to the developer's experience.

Potential conflict of interest: Nothing to report. Many thanks to Mauro Pantheghini and Ferruccio Ceriotti for raising important analytical issues regarding the standardization of laboratory tests. Measurements of serum enzymes are among the 20 most frequently ordered tests in clinical laboratories.1 Current participation reports for external quality assessment schemes (EQAS) show that the assays (Roche Diagnostics) used for our study2 are used widely in Germany and account for approximately 50% of EQAS participants for aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and gamma‐glutamyltransferase (GGT). For our study, these assays were implemented on only one platform (cobas analyzer; Roche Diagnostics, Risch‐Rotkreuz, Switzerland), and no other assays or manufacturers were used. AST and ALT assays included the addition of pyridoxal‐5‐phosphate, as required for standardization by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Analytical performance of all assays was evaluated in accordance with the current “Guidelines of the German Medical Association on Quality Assurance in Medical Laboratory Examinations” (Rili‐BÄK), which define the minimum requirements for internal and external quality assessment of quantitative measurements.3 The maximum allowable EQAS deviation is provided by Rili‐BÄK, and EQAS target values for ALT, AST, and GGT are reference method values.3 EQAS limits according to Rili‐BÄK were never violated during the entire study period. The root mean square of measurement deviations (RMSMDs, indicating imprecision and bias) always fulfilled the Rili‐BÄK requirements for internal quality assessment. Exemplary data (high/low control) from the middle of the study period, representative for the entire study period, showed interassay coefficients of variation (indicating imprecision) of 1.9%/2.2% (ALT), 1.7%/3.0% (AST) and 1.1%/2.3% (GGT), and RMSMDs of 2.7%/2.4% (ALT), 3.2%/4.6% (AST) and 2.6%/3.1% (GGT), respectively. Hence, we agree that measurements of enzyme concentrations should not ignore the type of method used, but we insist that our study fulfills the necessary standardization and quality assessment requirements. Furthermore, the focus of our work was not methodology, but to clarify the effects of sex, age, body mass index, and puberty on ALT, AST, and GGT enzyme levels.2 We completely agree that legislation shortcomings, manufacturing limitations, and lack of a proactive role of laboratory professionals to abandon nonstandardized assays are the most significant issues.1 Additionally, if laboratory professionals manage to sensitize clinicians to the clinical relevance of laboratory test standardization, clinicians themselves might become keener to ask for standardized assays as an inevitable requirement for optimal patient care and clinical guidelines.

Postharvest noninvasive assessment of fresh chestnut (Castanea spp.) internal decay using computer tomography images

Quality assurance is essential to ensure the quality of antimicrobial susceptibility tests by diffusion methods. Routine internal quality control testing with a range of control strains is a major part of the quality assurance process, as it facilitates monitoring of the performance of the test. Most standardized methods include tables of acceptable zone size ranges for control strains and, in addition to checking that control zone diameters are within the published ranges, rules or statistical approaches may be applied to indicate deviations from acceptable performance. If control tests indicate unacceptable performance, the source(s) of the error should be investigated and may include problems with media, antimicrobial discs, inoculum and plate reading. Participation in external quality assessment schemes provides an independent assessment of performance although the number of strains distributed in such schemes is limited. Internal quality assessment in which routine tests are repeated with the identity of the organisms blinded is a useful complementary approach to external quality assessment and may detect problem areas not highlighted by other control methods. Education is an important part of the quality assurance process. Knowledge of atypical results for different organism-agent combinations may provide warning of possibly erroneous results, and an understanding of the limitations and sources of error in disc diffusion methods contributes significantly to the recognition, resolution and avoidance of errors.

The precision and trueness of current instruments and methods in clinical laboratories is much better than in the past. However, the z-score and other comparison variables that are currently used in external quality assessment programs are based on relative data. Thus, they may change from program to program and also change over time within the same program and consequently may not be useful or cost-effective. We therefore devised a test-specific decision limit for accepting or rejecting test results based on a combination of the data of within- and between-subject biological variations. We then applied these limits to a group of tests performed in our laboratory and compared our results with those of external quality assessment programs. In addition, we combined external and internal quality control data on the same graph and prepared a two-dimensional graph for different levels of control sera. Inspection of all results of control sera on this new graph was more useful for decision making. We concluded that the z-score is not reliable for comparisons of test results in external quality assessment. As a substitute for this currently accepted practice, we assert that control limits based on biological variation are more reliable, and can be useful in the evaluation of both external and internal quality assessments and their combination on this new graph.