HbA1c

European HbA1c Trial (EurA1c)

2019-2020: 25 EQA organisers of 20 countries agreed to participate in the fourth “EurAAA1c” project. The name and logo of the project had been changed to EurAAA1c to acknowledge the participation of EQA organisers in Asia, America and Africa. The project is now called EurA1c. 16 EQA organisers used fresh whole blood samples and 13 organisers used lyophilised hemolysate samples (4 organisations used both fresh and lyophilised samples). 

2016-2018: IEQAS has been collaborating with this project annually since it was established in 2016, involving EQA providers in over 17 predominantly European countries. Two samples were distributed simultaneously via multiple EQA organisers to establish a European-wide picture of HbA1c performance. The project is part of the IFCC Committee for Education in the Use of Biomarkers in Diabetes (C-EUBD).The success of this EurA1c project highlights the importance of EQA in driving analytical quality improvement and follows on from the successful 2011 implementation of International Standardisation of HbA1c in Ireland. 

EurA1c 2016 Report: "Ireland Best Performance Testing" The 2016 EurA1c data shows that Irish (IEQAS) participants demonstrated the best performance of the 10 countries collaborating in the fresh blood element of the survey.