A health firm, Pinecrest Healthcare Limited, has called on the Federal Government, state governments and other stakeholders in Nigeria’s medical laboratory sector to declare a state of emergency on quality assurance.

The firm said that reliable laboratory results are critical to patients’ safety and effective healthcare delivery.

Managing Director of the firm, Dr Chijoke Onyia, gave the charge during a virtual media briefing ahead of Pinecrest Healthcare Limited’s inaugural quality assurance summit scheduled for October 10, 2026, in Lagos, themed “From Bench to Benchmark – Raising Laboratory Quality Standards for Patient Care.”

According to him, laboratory quality assurance should go beyond regulatory compliance and become a culture embedded in everyday laboratory practice.

He said laboratory investigations play a central role in modern healthcare, as results influence diagnosis, treatment decisions, disease monitoring and assessment of patients’ outcomes.

Onyia, who warned that inaccurate or unreliable laboratory results could have serious implications for patients, stressed the need for quality throughout the entire testing process, including the period from test requests and patient preparation to sample collection and transportation, analysis, result validation, and clinical interpretation.

He said the summit was 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 improving diagnostic accuracy, reliability and patients’ safety.

Onyia, however, said that laboratories should move beyond simply performing tests to developing systems where quality is continuously measured, monitored, improved and demonstrated.

He said the ultimate objective should not merely be technically acceptable laboratory results but improved patients’ care.

The managing director of the firm noted that the summit would examine issues, including quality assurance in modern laboratory practice, the role of people, processes and technology as drivers of laboratory excellence, and the need to make quality a culture rather than a checklist.