Quality to rely on: meeting report of the 5th Meeting of External Quality Assessment, Naples 2016

Improvement in the clinical outcome of patients with cancer comes in small steps. These steps are being taken by different professionals in different aspects of care: improved diagnosis, better surgery, new drugs, more complete ancillary care and, last but not least, a greater involvement of patients in decision-making. Many small steps will result in a big move forward, provided that the steps are in the right direction. When a diagnostic test fails to identify the correct patients for a certain drug the outcome may be negatively affected. This calls for quality across the whole clinical team and the activities that support the patient.In April this year, for the fifth consecutive year, representatives of all stakeholders involved in promoting accurate diagnostic testing for anticancer drug selection gathered in Naples in order to optimise the chance that patients will have an appropriate test which forms the basis for the decision of administering targeted treatment. These stakeholders include pathologists, molecular biologists, quality managers, medical oncologists, representatives of the pharmaceutical companies, vendors of synthetic controls for diagnostic methods and equipment, patients and representatives of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This focused meeting, with no more than 50–70 participants, has already proven to be effective by creating guidelines on a key aspect of quality in the chain: external quality assessment (EQA).1 The Naples meeting is organised by the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (AIOM) together with the European Society of Pathology (ESP) and the Italian Association of Surgical Pathology (SIAPEC-IAP), with the endorsement of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO). The 2016 meeting celebrated its fifth anniversary, and the start of IQN Path ASBL, a new organisation that brings all stakeholders together who are involved with EQA.EQA is one of the activities that measures and evaluates test performance in laboratories. It …