The need for Quality Assurance
What is Quality Assurance (QA)?
Quality Assurance can be defined as:
'All those planned or systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service is of the type and quality needed and expected by the customer.'
Quality Assurance must apply to all stages of a process.
Required standards are determined for each stage of a process and Quality Control (QC) measures are put in place to check attainment.
Analytical Quality Control (AQC) relates to the QC of sample analyses.
Why is Quality Assurance important to MarBEF?
MarBEF outputs may be used to influence policy makers. It is therefore vital that there is confidence in such outputs.
MarBEF involves integration of historic data from different sources. It is therefore essential that we understand the 'quality' of such information. This involves assessments of its inherent quality (i.e. whether data was obtained in a scientifically valid manner) and also its 'fitness for purpose'.
MarBEF will also involve collaboration between partners in the collection and interpretation of new data. In these circumstances it is important that work is undertaken to a consistently high standard.
Implementing QA in MarBEF
The QA work package has been devised to ensure that QA is an integral part of the MarBEF programme.
