Mario Pazzagli is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Florence, Italy. He has been Chair of the IFCC-Molecular Diagnostics Committee, Advisor of the CLSI Subcommittee on Molecular Methods and Co-ordinator of the EU project EQUAL “Multi-National External Quality Assay Programmes in Clinical Molecular Diagnostics”. MP is now chair of the EFLM Working Group on “Personalized Laboratory Medicine” and Member of the FP7 EU Project SPIDIA: “Standardisation and improvement of generic pre-analytical tools and procedures for in vitro diagnostics”.