American Association of Blood Banks (AABB)
Lab performance and patient care
The American Association of Blood Banks, or AABB, was founded in 1947 as an international organization committed to supporting medical facilities and activities related to blood banking, transfusion medicine, hematopoietic therapy, cellular therapy, gene therapy, and transplantation. With the advent of human genetic identity testing that originally required blood samples, AABB's standards began being applied to DNA testing labs as well. Since 1984, AABB has been developing standards for and accrediting parentage testing laboratories.
Mission
AABB continues to support the "highest standards of medical, technical, and administrative performance, scientific investigation, clinical application, standard setting, accreditation, and education." The goal of the AABB accreditation program is to "promote the highest standards of care for patients and donors" by nationally and internationally recognizing laboratories with high service and quality standards.
Significance of Accreditation
As one of its customized assessments, AABB conducts an accreditation program that evaluates and accredits family relationship and parentage testing for DNA testing laboratories. This parentage testing accreditation program is widely accepted as the standard for all DNA testing services. Because of AABB's high standards for laboratory procedures and patient care, AABB accreditation is most frequently required by courts and other government agencies for DNA testing in child support, adoption, and immigration cases, among others.
Standards for Accreditation
The AABB accreditation program examines both the quality management program and operational tools when assessing a lab. The AABB accreditation standards are based on standards established by CLIA and other federal regulations, in addition to AABB organizational standards. These standards represent accepted minimum requirements that may be exceeded in practice.
AABB parentage laboratory standards are based on:
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Organization and qualifications of directors and staff
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Resources
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Equipment
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Supplier and customer issues
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Process control
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Documents and records
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Deviations and nonconforming products and services
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Internal and external assessments
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Process improvements through corrective and preventative action
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Facility and safety
Assessors are sent to facilities every 2 years to perform on-site assessments of the testing laboratories' policies and practices. Facilities that exceed a standard are recognized by AABB as having a commendable practice.
AABB provides accreditation opportunities for specific activities including donor centers, transfusion services, cellular therapy, immunohematology reference laboratories, perioperative services, Specialist in Blood Banks (SBB) schools, and relationship and parentage testing.
These accreditation opportunities apply to DNA facilities as well. AABB accreditation is important because without it, companies are not independently certified to provide legal, chain of custody paternity testing results.
Resources
For more information on AABB or the accreditation process, click on any of the links below.
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