JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Despite the recent trend toward developing and applying quality control measures in the forensic science disciplines, there is a heightened interest to efforts to ameliorate disparate quality among laboratories through the enforcement of standards and best practices.

Objective:

is setting up the Arab Forensic Laboratories Accreditation Center (AFLAC) to act as key driving legal force for accreditation of the different forensic laboratories in the Arab region.

Methods:

The development of the Forensic Laboratory-Arabian Gate (FLAG) platform, it will serve as a preliminary stage for the Arab Forensic Laboratories Accreditation Center (AFLAC), two Preliminary steps will be achieved through the FLAG platform. First to analyze the international guidelines regarding the forensic laboratory practices in different specialties (the scoping study), the second is to explore how the international and national guidelines are translated into practice in Arab forensic laboratories (mapping surveys). Development of the Arabian Forensic Laboratories Accreditation Center (AFLAC), the forensic science practitioners will be invited to go through surveys to explore their views on the accreditation standards.

Results:

The first phase of our work (FLAG) is underway as of February 2022. We expect, FLAG platform launching, qualitative data collection from the different mapping surveys and data analysis results to be completed by December 2022. Establishment of the AFLAC management system and different forensic disciplines committees and getting the required regional recognition are expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

Conclusions:

This work describes our approach to provide a valuable tool for forensic laboratories accreditation to promote the best practices and their consistency in the field of forensic sciences in the Arab region.