Quality management system and accreditation of the in vivo monitoring laboratory at Karslruhe Institute of Technology.

The in vivo monitoring laboratory (IVM) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with one whole body counter and three partial-body counters, is an approved lab for individual monitoring according to German regulation. These approved labs are required to prove their competencies by accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2005. In 2007 a quality management system (QMS), which was successfully audited and granted accreditation, was set up at the IVM. The system is based on the ISO 9001 certified QMS of the central safety department of the Research Centre Karlsruhe the IVM belonged to at that time. The system itself was set up to be flexible and could be adapted to the recent organisational changes (e.g. founding of KIT and an institute for radiation research) with only minor effort.