The relevance of regulatory requirements and third party assessments clearly depends on the nature of the business, the demands of the clients and the type of laboratory.

For laboratory organisations it also depends to some degree on geographical location - in other words which standards are applied or demanded by the home country of the business and the country of the client (e.g. FDA requirements in the USA compared with GLP requirements in Europe)

ISO 9000 :-  Is intended to apply to all types of business whether providing commercial products and services or a not-for-profit organisation such as charities. Its focus is on customer satisfaction, the elimination of errors and continuous improvement. It has no scientific or technical content.

ISO 17025 :- Is intended to apply to all types of laboratories that provide testing services, whether commercially or for their own parent organisation.

It is effectively in two parts. The first is equivalent to ISO 9000 in terms of the basic processes required to run any business.

The second part is specific to laboratory management and contains the more technical requirements that you would expect to meet in order to achieve accurate and reliable scientific results for the testing carried out.

GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) :- Is intended to apply to laboratories whose work relates to the pharmaceutical and clinical environments. It focuses almost entirely on the laboratory organisation, project management and technical requirements.

In the UK and Europe a laboratory can only be formally assessed against GLP requirements if its own activities or those of its clients fall within the defined scope of GLP. Accreditation is not voluntary in the same way as it can be for the ISO standards.

The historical origins of GLP standards were a response to serious malpractice in certain clinical testing laboratories. Because of this its approach (and its interpretation) has been somewhat defensive. In other words:- "How can we prove in a court of law at some future date that the work that we did was competent and scientifically valid?"

As a result it can be seen as the most bureaucratic of the Management Systems with a strong focus on record keeping. The view of Quality Factors is that this is more to do with interpretation than with the real requirements for good laboratory management and good science.