As part of activities to mark its 20th anniversary, Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd has announced its inaugural Quality Assurance Summit aimed at raising laboratory quality standards for improved patient care in Nigeria.
The summit, themed “From Bench to Benchmark – Raising Laboratory Quality Standards for Patient Care” is scheduled to hold on 10th October, 2026 in Lagos.
The company disclosed this in a press briefing held in Lagos on Monday, October 6, 2026, where it unveiled plans for the landmark summit designed to bring together stakeholders in the healthcare and diagnostics ecosystem.
According to the organizers, the summit is designed to provide a platform for healthcare professionals and other stakeholders to examine the importance of quality assurance in medical laboratory practice, identify existing gaps and explore practical approaches to achieving higher standards of diagnostic accuracy, reliability and patient safety.
Speaking on the theme, Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd said the theme captures an important challenge facing modern laboratory medicine.
“The laboratory bench is where testing takes place. But quality cannot end with simply obtaining a result. From Bench to Benchmark represents a call for laboratories to move beyond merely performing tests to developing systems in which quality is continuously measured, monitored, improved and demonstrated,” the company stated.
It added that the ultimate objective is not simply to produce technically acceptable laboratory results, but to ensure better patient care for Nigerians.
The organizers noted that laboratory investigations are central to modern healthcare, as laboratory results influence clinical diagnosis, treatment decisions, monitoring of disease and assessment of patient outcomes.
An inaccurate or unreliable result, the company warned, can have serious implications for a patient. Quality must therefore be considered throughout the entire analytical pathway, from the moment a test is requested and the patient is prepared, through sample collection and transportation, to analysis, result validation, reporting and clinical interpretation.
The summit will examine how healthcare institutions can strengthen each of these components as part of a sustainable quality management system.
According to the briefing, participants will discuss critical issues affecting laboratory quality assurance in Nigeria. These include Quality Assurance in Modern Laboratory Practice, People, Process and Technology as the Three Drivers of Laboratory Excellence, Quality beyond Compliance: Making Quality a Culture not just a Checklist, Practical Illustration of External Quality Assurance (Proficiency Testing) Service, and panel discussion to deepen understanding of quality assurance.
Other areas include internal quality control, regulatory compliance, patient safety and global best practices in laboratory medicine.
One of the central messages of the Summit, according to Pinecrest, is that quality should not be viewed merely as a regulatory obligation. While compliance is important, sustainable quality requires a deeper culture where every member of the laboratory team understands how his or her actions affect reliability of results and ultimately patient care.
The Summit will encourage participants to consider practical ways of embedding quality into everyday laboratory operations rather than treating quality assurance as a periodic exercise undertaken primarily for inspection or accreditation purposes.
The event is expected to bring together stakeholders from across healthcare and diagnostics, including medical laboratory scientists, pathologists, clinicians and physicians, laboratory managers, hospital managers and administrators, regulatory and government agencies, professional associations, academia and training institutions, diagnostic laboratories, medical equipment and IVD companies, quality assurance professionals and members of the media.
Pinecrest Healthcare believes that raising laboratory quality standards requires collaboration across these different groups.
At the heart of the summit is a simple principle: Every medical laboratory result represents a patient. Behind every specimen is a person waiting for an answer that may determine whether a patient receives medication, undergoes a procedure, is admitted, discharged or receives reassurance.
Consequently, laboratory quality is not just about machines, reagents, procedures or numbers, it is about people. It is about ensuring that healthcare professionals can make clinical decisions with confidence and that patients receive the true care they deserve.
The company called on government at all levels and stakeholders to declare a state of emergency in Quality Assurance in medical laboratory practice in Nigeria. It urged governments to channel adequate resources towards supporting medical laboratories to implement robust and globally acceptable quality assurance protocols.
It also called on regulatory bodies to ensure medical laboratories comply with required minimum standard of quality assurance and for all stakeholders to collectively advocate for strict implementation of quality assurance in every aspect of medical laboratory practice.
The seminar is powered by Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd in commemoration of its 20th anniversary as its contribution to shoring up standards of medical laboratory practice in Nigeria.
Event: Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd 20th Anniversary Quality Assurance Summit
Theme: From Bench to Benchmark – Raising Laboratory Quality Standards for Patient Care
Date: 10th October 2026
Time: 11:00 am
Venue: Hybrid. Onsite – Welcome Centre Hotel, International Airport Road, Lagos. Virtual – Zoom platform.
-Host: Pinecrest Healthcare Ltd
Members of the media are invited to be part of the summit and engage with healthcare professionals.