Achieving and maintaining accreditation is critical to forensic laboratories. There are numerous examples in the media of what happens when the quality of work is compromised. A forensic lab could not only lose its certification, but innoce
Achieving and maintaining accreditation is critical to forensic laboratories. There are numerous examples in the media of what happens when the quality of work is compromised. A forensic lab could not only lose its certification, but innocent people could be imprisoned, or guilty people may be set free only to commit new offenses.
Without government financing, a crime laboratory might not be able to carry out its obligations to the community it serves, and accreditation is also linked to funding from that source.
Forensic labs face a high level of scrutiny and must work diligently to maintain quality standards and accreditation. When it was recently discovered that a firearms examiner incorrectly linked cartridge casings from two deaths in 2015 to the same pistol — and then misrepresented the error — the director of the that laboratory resigned.
The most recent revision to ISO 17025, which was initially released in 1999, describes the fundamental standards for the proficiency of testing and calibration laboratories.
Even while some of these standards, including the creation and implementation of policies and procedures, have nothing to do with the adoption of software, the correct LIMS can be a huge help in ensuring compliance with ISO 17025:2017.
A LIMS that has extensive quality management functionality is a much better option than the stand-alone quality-management systems that are currently available. The ideal version of such a system would support each of the following:
Document control
Documents like training manuals and standard operating procedures should be able to be stored by a LIMS for forensic purposes. This must allow for the routing of new documents (or new revisions) through a review and approval procedure. Stakeholders should ideally be informed of the revised version and given the opportunity to acknowledge receipt.
Documents should have a designated owner since they are living entities. To prevent procedural noncompliance, the owner should be made aware of impending expiration dates.
Purchasing services and supplies
Furthermore, the LIMS needs to be capable of tracking information about received consumables, such as lot numbers and expiration dates. Recipes stored in the LIMS make it easier to properly make reagents.The system should keep track of both the lot number of the developed material and its components when materials are produced internally.
This ability offers a number of important advantages.
Audit results can be mitigated by not using expired materials
When conducting root cause analysis, looking for instances where specific lot numbers were involved in the primary material or component can be quite helpful
It is possible to avoid testing delays caused by a lack of essential testing components by giving notice when supplies are running low
