Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine

Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Standardization of the colors of the blood collection tube caps

Are you in favor of the standardized colors of the blood collection tube caps?

The European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM) working group for the Standardization of the colors of the blood collection tube closures (TFG-STCC) was established in June 2015, with the aim to initiate and manage a dialog between interested parties in order to achieve the global harmonization of the color coding for blood collection tube closures (caps) and labels.

The TFG-STCC has recently started a close collaboration with the ISO TC76/WG1 on ‘Transfusion, infusion and injection, and blood processing equipment for medical and pharmaceutical use’, which is currently working on the revision of the ISO 6710 standard: 'Single-use containers for venous blood specimen collection’. This revision of ISO 6710 would also replace the current European standard EN 14820.

As we are aware that some barriers and obstacles could put this important project at risk of full implementation, we have decided to set up this short survey in order to gather some feedback from laboratory professionals on the importance and acceptance of such a colour code.

The main aim of the survey is to learn whether EFLM National Societies would be willing to accept an EFLM proposal for the colour coding of the blood tube caps as the European standard. Moreover, if there are institutions, laboratories or individuals which are not in favor of such standardization we would be very interested to understand possible reasons for this.

The results of this survey will provide us an overview of the opportunities and potential barriers for this project.

Open survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TFG-STCC

Source: EFLM, Ana-Maria Simundic, chair of the EFLM TFG-STCC

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