Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute.  Our Name Change Revisited…

It has been just over two years since we changed our name from National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). While we are delighted our new name is being adopted in everything from written to oral communications, staff and volunteers still receive questions about why we made a change. I would like to take this opportunity to review our decision. Very simply, we changed our name because we had outgrown the old one.

• “National” no longer applied due to our significant global activities and membership;
• “Committee” was no longer relevant, since we were operating ten standing Area Committees and over 70 active consensus standards and guidelines projects at any given time; and
• “Clinical Laboratory” was too limiting based on current and planned activities; thus, the “and” was added.

I’d like to focus the remainder of my comments on the addition of that small, but very important word “and.”

NCCLS/CLSI built an excellent reputation over the past 35 years by focusing on classic clinical laboratory disciplines, as well as activities contained within the four walls of traditional clinical laboratories in hospital, commercial, and physician office settings. However, the lines between traditional laboratory disciplines have increasingly blurred and physical locations for testing are rapidly changing. Today we have point-of-care testing; personalized medicine; over-the-counter tests; remote testing via the Internet; and integration with traditionally separate discipline sites, such as respiratory therapy. As the healthcare landscape has evolved, so have the activities of CLSI.

While recognizing the changing role of laboratory medicine, CLSI’s goal continues to be developing voluntary consensus standards and guidelines based on healthcare needs regardless of discipline or site. We intend to continue building on our core clinical laboratory competencies and to expand in such fields as quality systems, molecular methods, and automation and informatics. Additionally, we support development of standards and guidelines in testing areas such as point of care, respiratory therapy, and personalized medicine. CLSI is committed to positively impacting patient care by developing best practice documents for laboratory testing wherever it is performed.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback at gfine@clsi.org [ return to top ]