Health & Social Care • 4 mins read
Every year, World Health Day serves as a global reminder of the importance of accessible, high-quality healthcare. In 2025, the theme Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures focuses on maternal and infant health, highlighting the need for safe, effective, and equitable care for mothers and newborns. Ensuring positive health outcomes in this area requires robust systems that prioritise accuracy, reliability, and patient safety.
Accreditation plays a fundamental role in achieving these goals. It supports a range of antenatal and newborn screening services, each of which plays a vital role in early detection of health conditions that could impact a child’s development and well-being. These screenings help identify potential risks, allowing for timely interventions that can improve health outcomes. However, the accuracy and reliability of these tests are paramount—false positives can cause unnecessary distress, while false negatives can lead to missed diagnoses and delayed treatments.
Through independent assessment against internationally recognised standards, accreditation provides assurance that healthcare services meet stringent quality and safety benchmarks. UKAS works with healthcare providers, including NHS Trusts and private hospitals, to uphold trust and competence across a range of services, ensuring that patients receive care that is both safe and effective.
In the UK, antenatal/newborn screening services are accredited to ISO 15189:2022 Medical Laboratories – Requirements for quality and competence, which is mandatory in England. This accreditation ensures that laboratory testing, including antenatal blood screening, is carried out by competent professionals using validated methods that meet international standards.
In addition, UKAS supports infant screening programmes through accreditation to a range of relevant standards. For example, paediatric audiology services are assessed under the Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS) standard, helping to ensure accurate early detection of hearing issues. Meanwhile, ultrasound screening, which plays a crucial role in both antenatal and newborn care, is accredited under BS 70000, ensuring technical competence and quality management in the delivery of these services.
Together, these accreditations underpin trust in early screening assessments, contributing to more accurate diagnoses, timely interventions, and ultimately healthier futures for families.
The role of accreditation in healthcare safety and excellence
Accreditation provides a structured framework for quality assurance, ensuring that healthcare organisations operate in line with the robust requirements of international standards for competence and integrity. This is particularly vital in medical fields where accuracy, precision, and risk management are critical.
Key benefits of accreditation in healthcare include:
- Patient safety – Ensuring that services follow rigorous clinical protocols, reducing errors and improving outcomes.
- Consistency and reliability – Validating that diagnostic tests and procedures provide dependable and reproducible results.
- Professional competence – Verifying that healthcare professionals have the required skills and expertise.
- Regulatory confidence – Supporting compliance with national and international healthcare regulations.
As the UK’s National Accreditation Body, UKAS assesses healthcare organisations against nationally and internationally recognised standards, including ISO and BS standards (such as BS 70000), to ensure they provide services that patients and healthcare professionals can trust.
Accreditation’s role in improving maternal and infant healthcare outcomes
Accreditation is more than a mark of quality—it actively contributes to improving patient outcomes by driving continuous improvement and accountability in healthcare settings. Some of the key ways accreditation supports maternal and infant health include:
- Early Detection and Intervention – Ensuring timely identification of conditions such as congenital heart defects, metabolic disorders, or genetic conditions, allowing for early treatment.
- Evidence-Based Practices – Promoting adherence to internationally recognised guidelines that lead to safer and more effective healthcare delivery.
- Enhanced Patient Confidence – Empowering parents to trust the medical advice and test results they receive, reducing anxiety and improving the overall patient experience.
- Collaboration and Innovation – Encouraging knowledge sharing between accredited bodies, leading to improvements in screening methodologies and healthcare practices.
As part of its commitment to healthcare excellence, UKAS continues to work alongside healthcare providers, such as NHS Trusts, private hospitals, and specialist screening services, professional bodies such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), and the British Maternal & Fetal Medicine Society (BMFMS), and policymakers, including the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, and the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), to support accreditation frameworks that enhance maternal and infant care.
This World Health Day, as we focus on Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures, it is an opportunity to recognise the role of accreditation in ensuring high standards of patient care, particularly in maternal and infant health services.
By upholding rigorous standards, UKAS plays a crucial role in advancing the quality and reliability of healthcare services, contributing to better health outcomes for mothers and newborns alike.
For healthcare providers looking to enhance the quality and credibility of their services, accreditation is not just a requirement—it is a powerful tool in shaping a healthier future. Find out more about how UKAS accreditation underpins patient safety and care here.