An overview of medical diagnostic laboratories in South Africa that meet the international standard of accreditation: ISO 15189

Accreditation is an official recognition that a facility or laboratory is competent to perform specific tasks and has a documented manual on a Quality Management System (QMS) in place. According to the Accreditation Act 19 of 2006, South African National Accreditation Systems (SANAS) is the only internationally recognised accreditation body in South Africa. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard specifically for medical laboratory accreditation is ISO 15189:2012. This review is designed to bring awareness of accredited and unaccredited medical diagnostic laboratories in SA; to look at the number of accredited, unaccredited laboratories and the rate of accreditation growth; to examine the state of accreditation in South Africa with regard to how many are accredited, suspended or withdrawn; and to highlight the advantages of being an accredited laboratory. It also examines the nonconformances commonly raised during assessment and an overview of accreditation around the world. Upon accreditation, the laboratory is given the right to use the SANAS symbol on patient request forms or results as a confirmation of competency. This has motivated more and more laboratories to be accredited. Diagnostic laboratories contribute much toward the final decisions taken by clinicians to diagnose the patients or treatment; this may be from an accredited or non-accredited laboratory. Since patient care is inextricably linked to pathology testing, every laboratory should engage a premium QMS and be evaluated by an accreditation body to ensure that patients receive a trustworthy report. Accreditation is a voluntary process in South Africa but mandatory in some Western countries. Although some laboratories might lose accreditation along the way, the ratio compared to those accredited is still very small. The fact that a majority remain accredited is a good indication of a well-implemented QMS. The challenges faced by the medical technologist-owned laboratories remain, as they are still not accredited.

Common Features of Architectural Design of the Medical Purpose Building

The paper considers principal features and specific character of architectural design for health care institutions. Main designing stages, missions and complexities for every successive designing step have been revealed in the paper. The paper presents specific features, main stages and design approaches to designing of modern health care facilities, comfortable architectural environment of health institutions, which have been formed on the basis of the analysis of advanced international experience in the field of designing healthcare facilities. The proposed approaches are based on modern experience in designing medical buildings over the past decade in the developed countries. A special attention has been paid to obsolete methods for architecture-planning organization of healthcare facilities and modern approaches to arrangement of engineering and other systems which significantly influence on economical efficiency, quality, comfort and effectiveness of architectural environment in healthcare institutions. Every healthcare facility, every separate department are considered as unique in their essence, for this reason it is not so easy to reflect modern technological solutions and architectural tendencies. The paper contains an attempt to attract attention of architects to the complexity in designing of a building to be constructed, to find ways which will help to reach its step-by-step solution. It has been noted as well that there is a necessity to arrange interaction between an architect and a medical technologist. Modern medical departments and hospitals have been recently designed and built in the Ukraine, but they are in increasingly short number. These facilities have been constructed due to decision makers who, in spite of diverse difficulties, lack of information and specialists, lack of proper funding, etc., are trying to do their best in order to reach the modern level of desingning and construction of hospitals. So-called “typical” medical projects of 70-ies and 80-ies continue to be implemented up to now. This is certainly due to inadequate funding, but such economy has at the end rather high cost.