News Hub

Tuula Rintala
Director, Quality of Care and Advocacy
EBMT, European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation
Barcelona, Spain

2023 was a year of building capacity whilst JACIE continued to recover from the impact of Covid-pandemic. We were grateful that the Board of the EBMT approved three additional positions for the JACIE team: Medical Officer position, as well as an additional accreditation and a volunteer coordinator position. These positions will help us to strengthen the capacity and capability within JACIE at the time when we want to expand and develop to meet our stakeholders’ needs.

Last year was a busy year for JACIE. There were total 97 application in 2023 which is approximately 30% increase in comparison to 2022. 17% of the applications were for the initial accreditation with 6 centres (6%) applying for the 4th re-accreditation.

We also increased the number of inspections carried out by our inspectors. Total of 77 inspections were completed; nearly matching the current record from 2018. JACIE has therefore firmly returned to pre-pandemic activity and we are hugely grateful for all our inspectors, many of whom have carried out two or even three inspections in the course of the year helping us to achieve this.

Overall, there were 68 new accreditations in 2023 in comparison to 15 in 2022 and 27 in 2021. A huge thank you goes to the members of the Accreditation Committee who tirelessly reviewed the reports; for the Centres addressing deficiencies in a timely manner; and for the inspectors for assessing the Evidence of Corrections submitted by the Centres. Achieving the JACIE Accreditation truly is teamwork. 

Table 1. JACIE Applications 2000-2023.

Table 2. JACIE inspections 2000-2023

Table 3. Number of JACIE Accreditations 2000-2023

It is important that JACIE continues to focus on increasing the activity, but we also want to continue to build on the work started in 2023 to meet the objectives of the strategic plan. In 2024, we continue to embed continuous improvement in everything we do, whether in the JACIE office or supporting Centres in developing their Quality Management processes.

We will also continue to develop training for Centres and the Inspectors we work with. We launched an e-learning programme for Centres in October 2023 and we will continue to evaluate whether we can develop additional resources for the Centres either planning to apply or already in the accreditation process. We will also continue to develop resources for our inspectors, with a focus on Team Leaders who take on additional responsibilities during the inspection process to ensure that the inspections runs smoothly.

As JACIE prepares to another busy year in 2024, we continue to work with our stakeholders – Centres and the Inspectors – to improve our processes and to find ways to support our JACIE community.