JACIE Activity Report 2021

The Joint Accreditation Committee ISCT-Europe & EBMT (JACIE) was established in 1998. It promotes high-quality patient care and laboratory performance in the collection, processing and administration of cellular therapy through a profession-led, voluntary accreditation scheme.

JACIE works continuously with international partner organisations to develop and maintain standards for the provision of quality medical and laboratory practice in HSCT, performs on-site inspections, and accredits those programmes that demonstrate compliance with these standards. JACIE also provides training for inspectors and centres on the accreditation process.

Since 2000, 508 transplant programmes and facilities in 34 countries in Europe and beyond have applied to JACIE and 790 inspections (first-time and reaccreditation) have been performed. 368 applicants have achieved accreditation at least once with practically all centres repeating the process after the first accreditation cycle. There are over 300 registered inspectors, all volunteers drawn from the HSCT and cellular therapy field.

In terms of activity, 2021 continued to see severe negative impact of the pandemic on activities although this has been somewhat mitigated by the introduction of a remote inspection format and a so-called Short Process which avoid the need for inspectors to travel. 70 applications were received, 31 inspections of different formats were performed and 28 accreditations were awarded.

The second benchmarking exercise was performed in July 2021. A total of 395 centres were eligible to participate in the 2021 exercise. Of the notified centres, 68% (260 centres) were able to pick up the report: 200 directly through Google Drive access, 36 through their national registries and 24 were sent directly to the centres that were not able to access the drive themselves.

The majority (95%) of the centres that evaluated the report found the content comprehensible. 98% evaluated the quality as good and considered the current report an improvement on the previous release/version.

The 8^th edition of the FACT-JACIE Standards was published in May 2021.

The JACIE Twitter account @JACIE_EBMT has grown to 1,789 followers.

We would like to express our continued appreciation and admiration for the Inspectors, JACIE Committee Members, Accreditation, Standards and Quality Manager Committee members, other volunteers and the JACIE Office team for all their tremendous hard work, commitment and dedication.

Dr. Kim Orchard (Southampton, UK) succeeded Prof. John Snowden as Chair of the JACIE Committee in mid-2020. Prof. Snowden, now the EBMT Secretary, remains on the Committee. See https://www.ebmt.org/jacie-committee for more details.

Dr. Isabel Sánchez Ortega joined EBMT in March 2020 as Medical Officer. Among her responsibilities is supporting JACIE. Dr. Sánchez Ortega took over the JACIE Medical Director duties from Dr. Riccardo Saccardi, who occupied this role from January 2016 to June 2020.

Quality Managers Committee

The Quality Managers Committee was established in 2011. All of the members are experienced quality managers or responsible for quality management working in accredited centres or towards accreditation. The Committee is chaired by Ms. Renza Monteleone (Reggio Calabria, IT). See https://www.ebmt.org/quality-managers-committee for more details.