The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives and joint commissions from various national standards organizations. The purpose of the organization is to build a worldwide accepted standard that harmonizes all of the various country-to-country variations that exist due to globalization. Because different countries have different scientific organizations and regulatory bodies, it can be incredibly difficult to compare the quality of results from one laboratory in one country to the results from a different laboratory in a different country. ISO solves this problem by setting forth standards. In the case of the laboratory, the standard is referred to as the ISO/IEC 17025 standard. IEC stands for the International Electrotechnical Commission, which is a joint commission with the ISO body. The “17205” is the number of the standard itself and is version controlled, indicated by a colon and the number of the year in which it was finalized. For the laboratory, the most recent ISO standard is the ISO/IEC 17025:2017 standard, which is the standard under which Omnient Labs was certified in March of 2021. ISO standards typically get reviewed and revised continually, but it typically takes about 10 years to fully finalize the standard. The initial ISO standard for laboratories was ISO/IEC 17025:2005, which means that it was finalized in 2005. This standard is now fully deprecated, and any laboratories that were certified to the 2005 version of the standard needed to complete their recertification to the 2017 version of the standard as of December 31st, 2020. If you see a laboratory advertising their ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accreditation, know that this is out of date, and they are not currently certified. This is a very niche point that many people overlook, but an expired accreditation could be an indicator of major problems with the laboratory, its methods, its measurements, or its quality system as a whole. If you see this issue, steer clear!
