Organized from October to December 2021, this third edition of the MOOC generated more than 4,300 registrations on the France Université Numérique platform, spread over 97 countries. This interactive training course had the advantage of being entirely accessible online and by any professional working in a medical biology laboratory or involved in an accreditation project, but also by students destined for these professions, in order to meet three main objectives:

• Making all laboratory personnel aware of the issues involved in quality management,
• Understanding the inner workings of the ISO15189 standard,
• Understand the methods and tools for the implementation of a quality management system.

These objectives have been achieved, 506 of the participants have obtained a Knowledge certificate and 60 a Skills certificate.

Making quality management in medical laboratories accessible to all

The first MOOC – for Massive Open Online Course – was developed in 2019 as part of the Mérieux Foundation’s Quality Initiative, in partnership with Afnor and Institut Pasteur, to meet the growing need for accessible training in quality management.

The entire training course has been designed by the teaching team to cover from the fundamentals of quality to the deployment of the quality management system (QMS) for all processes implemented in a laboratory. Theoretical content was illustrated by feedback from laboratory professionals and quality experts to provide a concrete understanding of the implementation of the approach, particularly in a context of countries with limited resources. Focusing on interactivity to make learning more efficient, the MOOC relied on many innovative teaching resources and tools: videos, quizzes, discussion forums, etc. The organization of three YouTube Lives per edition completed the training, offering a privileged meeting place for participants to exchange live with international experts in the field.

In three years, the MOOC has attracted more than 11,500 registrations, proof of the interest and desire to implement solid quality management systems in the laboratory, to guarantee the reliability of test results and therefore better patient care.

A LinkedIn group was created to bring together MOOC participants and quality professionals. Now, it gathers a community of 800 members around quality in the laboratory.

About the Quality Initiative

The Mérieux Foundation’s Quality Initiative program aims to strengthen the knowledge and skills of laboratory personnel in quality management, through continuous training for laboratories in resource-limited countries.

The program proposes to support facilities in the implementation of their quality management system (QMS), with the purpose of obtaining accreditation according to the ISO15189: 2012 standard.

To date, 9 laboratories have joined the Quality Initiative and are being mentored to incentivize the quality culture within their teams. Four laboratories have achieved accreditation as a result of this mentoring.

Find out more about the Quality Initiative