title: Quality assurance in screening programmes.
abstract: All screening programmes do harm; some also do good. The responsibility of the policy-maker is to decide which programmes do more good than harm at reasonable cost and then introduce them, once they are confident that the screening programme could and will reach the standard of quality required for success. The ratio of benefit to harm is not, however, constant and this relationship demonstrates a shifting balance.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Health Sciences, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Austoker
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000592:standards*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D018570:Risk Assessment