NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Euformatics has formed a strategic partnership with the European Molecular Genetics Quality Network (EMQN) and UK National External Quality Assessment Service (UK NEQAS) for Molecular Genetics, the companies announced today. The three will work together to automate their data validity check and enhance the NGS EQA result assessment processes to include more quality metric measures for laboratories with help from the omnomicsQ software. Their partnership will make them the largest providers of external quality assessment (EQA) in Europe, they said in a statement.
OmnomicsQ software was developed to provide an objective, third party evaluation based on validated NGS quality metrics, and in accordance with the College of American Pathologists' NGS practice guidelines.
EMQN and UK NEQAS for Molecular Genetics have pioneered the development of EQA for NGS, the companies said in a statement. They aim help laboratories determine the quality of their NGS service compared to their peers and measured against best practices, and even to improve best practices. Euformatics is providing support for the data gathering, data validation, results analysis, and for visualization of QC metrics based on omnomicsQ.
This year's EQA was provided as a wet laboratory-based exercise which asked participants to test a genomic DNA sample using their standard NGS process and report the results back to the EGA providers — the companies believe this will play an important role in enabling labs to benchmark this new technology, assess the accuracy of data, and facilitate high quality reporting for the benefit of patients.
"NGS quality control is vital for ensuring successful and accurate NGS test results," said UK NEQAS Director Sandi Deans and EMQN Director Simon Patton in a statement. "This partnership helps to advance our development of best practices and the further diffusion of technological innovation in molecular genetics testing. We will also be able to deliver more comprehensive EQA reports to all participants."