EBMT

A Report from the JACIE Accreditation Office

Accreditation

36 centres are accredited and this number is expected to exceed 40 by early summer this year as centres complete their corrective actions. The full list of centres is available at www.jacie.org/portal/jacie/facilities. If you expect to apply for accreditation, please contact the JACIE Office at jacie@ebmt.org as this information will help us in planning for inspections over the next 12-18 months.

First reaccreditation cycle starts in late 2007

Later this year, JACIE will reach the milestone of the second cycle of inspections, that is to say, the reaccreditation of those centres that took the brave step back in 2004 to undergo inspection. The JACIE Office is already in contact with those centres and is working on finding inspectors and inspection dates. This is an important stage and will provide very interesting information on how well quality systems are now working following their implementation 3 years ago.

3rd edition of the FACT-JACIE Standards

The 3rd edition was released in the USA at the end of 2006. Its release in Europe was approved by the JACIE Board in February and will come into effect from 19th August this year. The Standards, a cross-reference of the current and new standards, the Inspection Checklist and an outline of significant changes are all available for download from the web site.

JACIE at the EBMT Annual Congress, 25th-28th March 2007, Lyon

The JACIE session took place on the last day of the EBMT congress and was once again a great success with almost 200 persons attending in spite of the late time slot. Feedback on the session was positive and we will begin planning for Florence 2008 shortly.
The Nurses Workshop also attracted over 150 participants and attendees were particularly interested in the presentation by Natacha Blanc of the E. Herriot Hospital, Lyon on their experience since accreditation. The slides from both sessions are available from the News & Events section of the JACIE web site.
If you have any suggestions of what you would like to see at next year’s JACIE sessions, please contact us at jacie@ebmt.org.

Training

A centre preparation course for Greek participants only was held over 5 days at the start of May. The course included dedicated sessions for physicians, laboratory staff and nurses. The specialist day format worked very well and the response from the participants was very positive.

The next centre preparation course will take place in Athens, Greece at the end of June 2007 and is already full.

An Inspector Training Course is being organised for 13th -14th September, 2007 in Athens. This course is open to all EBMT Members and information will be made available to the National Representatives when all the details have been finalised. For contact details of your National Representatives please click here.

JACIE would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Damianos Sotiropoulos of George Papanicolaou General Hospital, Thessaloniki and Ms. Tonia Epifani of T&T Executive S.A. who do fantastic work in organising and running the JACIE courses.

Training courses are generally organised at national level by national societies or individual institutions. Another approach is the ‘JACIE Day’ which has been organised successfully in the United Kingdom and Switzerland and uses a more discussion-based format. If you or your national society are interested in organising a course or information day, JACIE can provide you with course format, slides, content and recommend expert speakers. Please contact us at jacie@ebmt.org.

EUSTITE Project

EUSTITE is a three year project that has been funded by the European Union following the publication of three EU directives defining minimum standards of quality and safety for human tissues and cells that are applied to patients for therapeutic purposes. The EU Directives require Member States to ensure that procedures for collecting, processing, storing and distributing these tissues and cells are compliant with the standards defined in the Directives so that patients are treated with tissues and cells that will function as intended and will be safe. The project will propose standardised guidelines for the conduct of inspections and tested tools for the training of inspectors in this field to support Member States in the implementation of these Directives.  The project began on 1st  December  2006.

A large part of the EUSTITE project is focused on agreeing best practice in the inspection of tissue and cell procurement and tissue establishments and on developing that into guidelines and using it as the basis of training courses for inspectors. The First Exploratory Workshop was held in Dublin on 23rd -24th  May and the organisers invited JACIE as an External Expert group to present its experience in inspecting HPC establishments. The outcome of this workshop will go towards the first version of the inspection guidelines that is expected to be released in June 2007. A revised and expanded version will be released in 2008.  Further information is available from www.eustite.org

JACIE Board Meeting

The next JACIE Board meeting will take place from 12.00 to 17.00 on Friday, 5th October, 2007 with the location to be confirmed. This meeting is open to Board members and invitees only.

Eoin McGrath
JACIE Executive Officer