Liaison with the commercial world

Diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies participate in the scheme. It is also the practice of some companies to offer new products to the scheme for evaluation. Some companies may see this as free advertising on their part; others would see it as a risk since the product may not always perform well . We see it as a chance to look at the performance of a product in a variety of laboratory environments. We make no recommendations, we simply analyse the data and comment on the results. The final decision on whether to use a particular product can only be made by individual laboratories. It should also be noted that the Scheme does not, under any circumstances, give the names and/or addresses of participants to commercial companies.

Results are confidential as is the identity of participant labs. However, those who wish to correspond with users of the same or similar instruments or reagents are encouraged to do so if this is mutually agreed.