Microbiology & Infectious Disease Serology — NABL criteria
NABL 112A, section 7.4 — Technical Requirements, Discipline Wise
Checked against NABL 112A (Issue 01, 18-Dec-2024) · page updated 23 September 2026
These are the requirements NABL applies specifically to Microbiology & Infectious Disease Serology, quoted from NABL 112A. They sit on top of the general requirements every accredited laboratory must meet, not instead of them.
What NABL 112A requires of this discipline
- Laboratory shall use centrifuge cups with safety lids.
- BSL3 practices need to be followed for culture-based drug susceptibility testing and shall have a dedicated area for donning and doffing of personnel protective equipment.
- Mycology: For handling specimens for filamentous fungi, there shall be a dedicated area that shall be physically separated from the bacteriology and mycobacteriology section and shall not be used for any other culture work.
- A laboratory performing fungus culture shall be equipped with a bio-safety cabinet class II A2 and BOD incubator.
- CO2 generating or anerobic gas packs shall be used in air-tight boxes of appropriate size as recommended by the manufacturer.
- Other equipment: Autoclaves and hot air ovens shall be checked by both chemical and biological indicators.
- Chemical indicators shall be used with each batch, whereas a biological indicator shall be used at least once a week.
- Materials used for collection and transport: The laboratory shall ensure that all the material used for collection and transport are appropriate and verified for their usefulness and efficiency before being put in to use.
- Growth shall be verified objectively using standardized inoculum of reference strains and measured semi-quantitatively.
Showing 9 of 21 discipline-specific requirements identified in section 7.4. Read the full section in the official document before an assessment — this page is a guide to it, not a replacement for it.
Verbatim excerpts from NABL 112A - Specific Criteria for Accreditation of Medical Laboratories, Issue 01, 18-Dec-2024, section 7 (Technical Requirements - Discipline Wise). Downloaded from nabl-india.org 2026-09-23. Download the current version from NABL →
Records this discipline still has to produce
The discipline criteria above are additional. Every accredited laboratory, in every discipline, must still maintain the general record set:
- NABL Internal Audit Checklist for Medical Laboratories
- Internal Quality Control (IQC) Record and Levey–Jennings Chart
- EQA / Proficiency Testing Participation Record
- Method Verification Record
- Method Validation Record
- Measurement Uncertainty (MU) Record
- Comparability of Results Record
- Quality Indicators Record
- Sample Rejection Log and Rejection Criteria
- Primary Sample Collection Manual
Other disciplines
- Clinical Biochemistry Cl. 7.1
- Clinical Pathology Cl. 7.2
- Haematology & Immunohaematology Cl. 7.3
- Histopathology Cl. 7.5
- Cytopathology Cl. 7.6
- Flow Cytometry Cl. 7.7
- Molecular Diagnostics Cl. 7.8
- Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics Cl. 7.9
- Cytogenetics Cl. 7.10
- Point of Care Testing (POCT) Cl. 7.11
HealthFlow is not NABL accredited and is not an accreditation body. Using it does not make a laboratory accredited or compliant. These pages describe what the standard requires; meeting it is the laboratory's own responsibility.
What the software contributes is evidence produced by normal work: turnaround time measured per test, reports versioned and locked on authorisation with dual signatures, every report access written to an append-only audit trail enforced at the database and retained two years, and full export whenever you want it.