Changes to the UKAS Schedules for organisations conducting Toxicology Testing

Notification of changes to the UKAS Schedules of Accreditation for organisations conducting Toxicology Testing

Further to intelligence gathered during assessments of accredited toxicology laboratories over the last 2 years, UKAS has initiated a root and branch review of the processes and analytical methods used in laboratories undertaking Toxicology Testing.

One of the recommendations resulting from this evaluation has been to review and amend the UKAS Schedules of Accreditation to better reflect the type of testing, the analytical capability of the methods and the purpose of the analysis to provide improved transparency for customers, end-users of testing services and other interested stakeholders.

The new format of schedules will include an increased number of potential market sectors served by the laboratory, namely Forensic Analysis; Work Place Drugs Analysis; Medical and Legal Analysis. This detail will be found in the middle column of the schedule and will relate to the analysis that is detailed below.

Additionally, each analysis and drug/drug group analysed for each market sector, has been categorised into one of the three (or any combination of the three) categories:

• Presumptive screening
• Confirmation
• Quantitation

For all presumptive screening and confirmatory analyses, the cut-off concentration applied for each drug/drug group has been defined. Where quantitative analysis is performed, the applicable range of concentration over which the analysis has been shown to be valid, is provided.

The intention is that the additional detail provided on schedules will help prospective customers to more clearly identify a suitable testing laboratory based on their requirements (e.g. if they require results for forensic purposes), the concentration ranges and cut-off values for which uncertainty of measurement with a defined level of confidence, has been estimated.

The changes detailed above will be made to the schedules of all organisations conducting Toxicology Testing within the market sectors described above during early August 2019.

Any queries relating to the format and update to these schedules should be addressed to the Technical Focal Point for toxicology within UKAS, Fran Bilby ([email protected]).