Control de calidad en los Laboratorios de Ensayo Microbiológico

In assay laboratories it is important to guarantee the validity and traceability of the generated results, and for this reason there is an increasing interest in introducing standards such as UNE-EN ISO/IC17025, which include both internal and external quality controls. Therefore, the use of reference materials is important and necessary for different purposes, such as methods validation or the performance of actions based on the systematic contrast of all the activities involved in the quality control. Nevertheless, in microbiology the present offer of reference materials is very low mainly because they are very difficult to be prepared. Moreover, a reference material can be very useful for the sample preparation of proficiency testing schemes whose participation is important as external quality control.