UK NEQAS Haematology Update Webinars March 2021

Booking for these free webinars is now open. The first is a Morphology session with Dr Peter Carey, Professor Barbara Bain, Dr John Burthem and Dr Michelle Brereton, where each will talk about a particular case or condition of morphological interest.

Week 1	UK NEQAS Morphology with the Experts
Day/date/time:	Tuesday 9thMarch 2021, 14:30-15:30 (UK time)
Guest speaker(s):	Dr Peter Carey, Professor Barbara Bain, Dr John Burthem, Dr Michelle Brereton
Booking:	Click here

Week 2	Troubleshooting Haematology EQA
Day/date/time:	Tuesday 16thMarch 2021, 14:30-15:30 (UK time)
Guest speaker(s):	Dr Barbara De la Salle and colleagues
Booking:	Click here

Week 3	Haemoglobinopathy EQA Cases
Day/date/time:	Tuesday 23rdMarch 2021, 14:30-15:30 (UK time)
Guest speaker(s):	Dr Barbara De la Salle and colleagues
Booking:	Click here

Details of the webinar programme and the links to the booking page can be accessed here. The webinars are free to attend and all are welcome.

UK NEQAS Haematology webinars coming in March

We are pleased to announce three webinars for participants. The first will be a morphology with the experts session on March 9th, followed by sessions on automated counting on March 16th and haemoglobinopathies on March 23rd. Each will be for one hour and will be free to join. A first announcement is attached here and further information will be available in the next week or so.

UK NEQAS Participants' manual

Please click here for the UK NEQAS Haematology Participants’ Manual – Version 11 (February 2021) available to download.

2021 Re-Registration

UK NEQAS Haematology:

Re-Registration process is now open for UK NEQAS Haematology. You will receive an email with instructions on what you need to do to renew your membership for the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022. Please re-register by 19th March 2021. For queries please contact [email protected]

UK NEQAS Blood Transfusion Laboratory Practice BTLP:

Re-Registration process is now open for UK NEQAS BTLP. You will receive an email with instructions on what you need to do to renew your membership for the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022. Please re-register by 26th March 2021. For queries please contact [email protected]

UK NEQAS Newsletter 2021-2022

Please click here for the Haematology Newsletter 2021-2022

Please click here for the BTLP Newsletter 2021-2022

Schedules

UK NEQAS Schedules for 2021/22

PDF copies of exercise schedules have been uploaded and can be accessed in our documents section. You can also use our new online schedules list by clicking here Online schedules.

The online schedules page allows you to view all the exercises along with the opening, closing and reporting dates. You will also be able to filter down and view schedules for individual shcemes. Further to this you can view an individualised schedule for your own PRN from that same page as long as you are logged in. To do this click the Login button, login with your PRN,Identity and Password and click the Distribution schedules option from the drop down menu with your initials.

All schedules allow you to export them as PDFs or Excel sheets so you can download and / or print them.

UK NEQAS BTLP Webinar available online

The recording of our webinar is now available online on our YouTube channel. You can find it by clicking here. We hope to host further webinars in the future, if you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see covered, please email us

2101F delayed 1 day

Due to an unforeseen material processing issue, 2101F has been delayed for 1 day. This affects the dispatch, closing and reporting of the exercise. We have every confidence that the material used will (on this occasion) be valid for an extra day, but we will be performing additional in house testing to ascertain whether this is the case. Please accept our sincere apologies for this delay.

Brexit information

UK NEQAS Haematology and Transfusion would like to assure all of our participants that, we have revised systems to ensure the continuity of the services we provide.

We have been working with all our EU participants and distributors to ensure that we have all relevant documentation and information in place. In preparation for the end of the transition period we have asked all our participants in the EU provide us with their Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) Number. Provision of an EORI number should ensure the rapid clearance of EQA service materials through EU customs.

For our participants in Northern Ireland we will be providing delivery of the service through DHL rather than Royal Mail in order to ensure that we meet the paperwork requirements of the withdrawal agreement.

See also previous Brexit update from UK NEQAS Haematology and Transfusion.

See also Brexit update from UK NEQAS Central Office.

Covid-19 update:

The UK NEQAS President has issued an updated communication from the UK NEQAS Charity Central Office to all UK NEQAS participants. The letter is available here or from the Covid-19 response banner above. If you have any queries or concerns about UK NEQAS Haematology and Transfusion services during the pandemic, please contact us directly ( [email protected] or [email protected]).

FMH Scheme back up and running

We are pleased to announce that we have been able to obtain sufficient material to run the 2005F (dispatched 15/09/20), and we have been able to fulfil our plan to send three samples on this occasion. You should be able to submit all results via our normal website, please let us know if you have any issues by contacting us by email [email protected].

We hope to repeat this with the next few exercises to catch up with the missed exercises in May and July.
We hope to have the report out in the usual timescale but due to the additional data to process and the need for additional validation, we may be slightly late releasing the report. Please bear with us if this is the case, we want to make sure that reports we send are correct.

Postponement of the UK NEQAS Haematology Annual Participants’ meeting

The Annual Participants’ meeting 2020 was cancelled as a result of the national Covid-19 restrictions and we have taken the difficult decision not to hold a face-to-face meeting in 2021 because of continued uncertainty. We will hold three webinars free-of-charge for participants on March 9, 16 and 23 2021 and plan to offer further online or streamed educational activities in place of the Participants’ Meeting in the Autumn of 2021.

UK NEQAS Covid-19 testing EQA

UK NEQAS offers a range of EQA to support Covid-19 diagnostic and monitoring testing. Click here for more information.

Parasitology Teaching Day

For access to UK NEQAS Parasitology website please click here. If you have any questions, please email us here.

Handling UK NEQAS Haematology and Transfusion specimens during the COVID-19 pandemic

UK NEQAS Haematology and Transfusion specimens are a low risk for Covid-19 infection, compared to clinical samples. We have undertaken a risk assessment and advice on handling our specimens and packages during the pandemic can be found here.

We gave consideration to cancelling and moving the exercise to a different date, however with the rapidly changing situation around COVID-19, it seemed very unlikely that there would be any short-term improvement in access to material.

The data entry pages for the exercise will still have details for both Patients 1 and 2. We have marked all Patient 2 samples as “Unsatisfactory sample quality – Sample not received” so that you can submit results without entering data for Patient 2.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this change.