Blood coagulation: what’s new from the UK NEQAS BC scheme?

UK NEQAS for Blood Coagulation (BC) has held an annual scientific meeting to update delegates on many aspects of clinical and laboratory haemostasis since 1993.  The first meeting was held in Halifax Hall at the University of Sheffield.  The following year, to accommodate the increased numbers wishing to attend, the meeting was moved to the University of Sheffield Octagon building.   This second meeting included topics such as dilemmas in heparin dosage assessment and evaluation of the newly developed A–E performance grading system.  Since these early successful and informative meetings, there have been many further developments including trade shows, a move to Hallam University, two-day meetings, and more recently the introduction of abstracts and posters presented by delegates.

Development of the programme for the 2020 meeting commenced in the summer of 2019 and included novel and non-replacement therapies for haemophilia, diagnosis and management of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), personalised and alternative anticoagulants, and investigation of platelet disorders among the topics to be covered by a wide range of high-profile speakers from the UK, Europe and the USA. Sadly, however, shortly after the programme for 2020 was announced, in light of the evolving SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, UK NEQAS BC, like many other scientific meeting organisers, had to decide that their planned 2020 scientific meeting should be cancelled.

One of the features of the annual meeting is the opportunity to update delegates on findings from, and developments in, the UK NEQAS BC programmes, and plans for future exercises and initiatives.  For 2020, the planned topics for presentations by the UK NEQAS BC team included data and analysis from new haemophilia programmes, ROTEM/TEG programme developments, and HIT screening test findings.  Some details from these presentations are given below.