About the DGKL

The German Society for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (DGKL) was established in 2003 following a 12-year convergence phase through the fusion of two academic medical societies, the German Society for Clinical Chemistry (DGKC) and the German Society for Laboratory Medicine (DGLM). On May 8, 2003 the new united society was registered, retroactively to July 1, 2002, in the society register of the city of Frankfurt am Main.

The founding committee contained an equal number of members from the DGKC and the DGLM.

The first challenge of the DGKL steering committee, consisting of Professor Michael Oellerich as president (formerly DGLM), and Professor Knut Kleesiek as vice president (formerly DGKC), Professor Wolfgang Vogt as secretary (formerly DGLM), Professor Heinrich Patscheke as treasurer (formerly DGKC) and the other steering committee members Professor Ingolf Schimke (formerly DGKC) and Professor Utz Merten (formerly DGLM) was the actual fusion of the two societies and the creation of a "corporate identity" to provide a uniform appearance of the united society internally and externally.

Practically, this meant creating a new logo, merging conferences and prizes, and the continuation of the Reference Institute for Bioanalytics (RfB) as established round-robin test organization commissioned by the German Medical Association.

The goal of the fusion of the two societies was to create a strong uniform presence and to avoid redundancies and mutual inhibition in national and international bodies and in discussions with representatives from the political arena, public authorities, chambers, associations and universities.

Through this fusion, the mutual goals of confirming the status of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine as a scientific subject and retaining university chairs could be realized.

Recent examples of the successful work of the DGKL include retaining the chair of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry of the Hannover Medical School by establishing a foundation chair and working out a draft for guidelines for the German Medical Association to ensure the quality of laboratory medicine experiments by the DGKL working group "Qualitative Laboratory Analyses".

By combining competencies and resources, the new united society is poised to successfully develop the subject area of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine – even in difficult times.