New PILOT EQA SCHEME for Microarrays/Array CGH

As part of a joint collaboration between CEQA and EMQN ( www.emqn.org/ ), we are offering a pilot EQA in Constitutional molecular karyotyping (Microarrays/arrayCGH) in 2009. To participate in this pilot scheme please register for the EQA from your respective website (CEQA for Cytogenetic labs, or EMQN for Molecular Genetics labs). The pilot is free of charge although if you haven’t registered with either CEQA or EMQN before there is a small annual administration fee to join.

To register for the scheme, please log in to your CEQA account and purchase the scheme from the catalogue.

It is possible that in the longer term this will form part of our usual repertoire of EQA services and as such we hope to learn as much from running this scheme as possible. At the same time we hope that you will appreciate this opportunity to test out your protocols and have your reports peer reviewed.

The pilot EQA will be restricted to 30 participants. We wish to enrol a representative number (10) of labs for each platform (BAC, Oligo and SNP). Hence, following registration we will ask you to complete a short questionnaire so a wide range of laboratories can be selected for this initial pilot. The staff at CEQA and EMQN  will make a decision on which labs will participate in the practical part of the scheme. This decision will be based on the results of the questionnaire and our need to ensure that we pilot the EQA on each platform type used.