Nigel Coles is a Quality Manager at the  Central & South Genomics Laboratory Hubs based at Birmingham Women’s Hospital and also trustee of the Institute of Biomedical Science. He has over 40 years’ experience of working in medical laboratories. The West Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory is a UKAS Accredited Medical Laboratory number 8176. Recently he has been exploring the value of accreditation and asking the question “does accreditation improve services or prevent innovation and improvement?”.