Performance criteria for combined uncertainty budget in the implementation of metrological traceability

The measurement uncertainty budget should combine the uncertainty of higher order references, the uncertainty of commercial system calibration, the system imprecision and individual laboratory performance in terms of variability. Here we recommend that no more than one third of the total uncertainty budget, established by appropriate analytical performance specifications, is consumed by the uncertainty of references and approximately 50% of the total budget consumed by the manufacturer’s calibration and value transfer protocol. The remaining 50% should be available for the commercial system imprecision (including the batch to batch variation of the reagents) and individual laboratory performance in order to fulfil the uncertainty goal. For commercial systems to work properly, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) manufacturers will need to take more responsibility and ensure the traceability of the combination of platform, reagents, calibrators and control materials for system alignment verification that only as such (as a whole) are certified (“CE marked”) by the manufacturer itself in terms of traceability to the selected reference measurement system. Particularly, IVD manufacturers should report the combined (expanded) uncertainty associated with their calibrators when used in conjunction with other components of their analytical system (platform and reagents). This is more than what they are currently providing as traceability and uncertainty information.