How to use EPTIS

The EPTIS database is embedded in the website www.eptis.bam.de. A database query can be started in two ways:

(1) Type a freetext keyword. An example: cat will return PT schemes that contain words like cation, catalytic or scatter. Keywords with less than three characters are only accepted if they represent a chemical symbol or an abbreviation. Thus, cd is interpreted as cadmium, ms as mass spectrometry.

(2) Select a country, testing field or product group from the three predefined lists. An example: choosing France will return PT schemes operated in France. There is an extra tickbox to restrict the query to those PT providers that are accredited or otherwise recognised for the specific PT scheme.

Both query types can be mixed. It is certainly convenient to start with a freetext query (1) and then specify additional query categories (2) when the query results appear too imprecise, or the number of results too high. An example: a freetext query for Cd yields 64 PT schemes containing the keyword cadmium but only 9 schemes when the product group is additionally set to food, and only 2 schemes when the country is additionally set to France.

The submit button will take you to the EPTIS website. There you can view your query results and refine your query by changing keywords or adding categories as explained above.

If you encounter any problems searching the database, please contact your national contact point www.eptis.bam.de or the EPTIS secretariat.