• By recruiting an experienced scientific advisor, Operational Development gave through the year a strong push to consolidate staff and tools enabling innovation. This allowed pursuing research funding efforts that resulted in a tenfold increase in external grant contribution to LNS participation in national and European research projects.
• Our scientific advisor/project coordinator, was awarded with the ISBER 2021 Pioneer’s Award.
• Our scientific advisor collaborated on 4 scientific publications throughout 2021.

• Support was provided to the LNS on all legal questions ans more particularly on:
  – Health law,
  – Contract law,
  – Data protection law,
  – Intellectual property law,
  – Public tender law,
  – Administrative law,
  – Commercial law.
• The LNS’s departments received support in drafting, reviewing and signing all kind of agreements, among others:
  –  Collaboration agreements,
  –  Consortium agreements,
  –  Grant agreements,
  –  Expert and services agreements,
  –  Maintenance agreements,
  –  Etc.
• Support was also given in drafting and reviewing the department’s public tenders: open procedures and negotiated procedures.
• The Legal Services worked closely with the Data Protection Officer in order to ensure the LNS’ compliancy with GDPR.
• The Legal team has been strengthened by one person to cope with the increased activity of the service.

The Communication unit drives the Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) activities of the LNS.  In 2021, the unit put in place several actions in place to underline the commitment of the LNS for health and inclusion causes:

• 11.02: The LNS celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science by giving visibility to 3 LNS female scientists with the presentation of Elizabeth Petkovski, Ann-Christin Hau and Anke Wienecke-Baldacchino.
• 21.03: On World Down Syndrome Day, LNS employees were invited to wear 2 different socks to raise awareness that each person is unique. It was also a way to show solidarity with people with Down Syndrom.
• 27.03 – 28.03: The LNS Runner Team partipated to the Relais pour la Vie solidarity run.
• 25.09: On the occasion of the Lëtz Go Gold solidarity run organised by the Fondatioun Kriibskrank Kanner, the LNS team was able to contribute with an amount of €1,080.00, raised among others from the sale of LNS Covid-19 Fighters gadgets during our Open Day.
• October: In the framework of Pink October, the LNS organized an internal sale of old LNS fridges/freezers to staff. Profits of this sale were for the benefit of the 30.000 pink ribbons challenge of Europa Donna Luxembourg within the framework of the Broschtkriibslaf. Our scientific experts also participated in round table and communication campaign.
• 25.10 – 10.12: During the Orange Week, the LNS hosted the exhibition of the non-profit organisation Femmes en détresse (Women in Distress) in order to raise awareness of violence against women.
• December: The LNS took part in an Advent calendar charity initiative for the neediest and supported the NGO Médecins du Monde Luxembourg through its seasonal greeting cards.

The Communication unit coordinates public and media relations:

• LNS’s presence in the person of Friedrich Mühlschlegel, LNS Director, alongside with the Minister of Health and the Director of Health at the Ministry’s press conference (sequencing).
• Paulette Lenert, Health Minister, together with Friedrich Mühlschlegel, at the online panel of the virtual conference “It’s Time to talk”, organised by the Luxembourg Times.
• LNS participated in Luxembourg Open Doors event and welcomed people to visit the institute. The event was a great success thanks to our fantastic LNS voluntary team and visitors.

The Communication unit plays a key role in the implementation of the “Together LNS” spirit:

• The unit organized the 9th and 10th edition of the Welcome Day. The Welcome Day event aims at gathering all new joiners to provide them with a full overview of all LNS departments and giving participants the opportunity to introduce themselves.
• The Communication unit organized the “LNS one-to-one Sprechstunde” with our Director Friedrich Mühlschlegel. Through this regular initiative, LNS staff had the opportunity to have a direct conversation with the LNS Director. The aim was to achieve an even better understanding of each other through an open exchange as people and colleagues, and to make the LNS a workplace where everybody can contribute even better.
• During summer time, 3 LNS Quiz were organized with the objective to reinforce and make live the LNS corporate values with the ultimate goal to evolve the “Together LNS” spirit.
• For the second year in a row, the LNS hosted digitally its LNS end-of-year party.

Miscellaneous: The LNS welcomed the production team for the shooting of scenes related to our laboratory for season 2 of Luxembourgish crime series Capitani, aired on Netflix.

• All departments are continuously making progress on the objectives of the running strategic plan, thus allowing to close one out of five initially fixed objectives at year’s end.
• At the beginning of 2021, the unit also successfully launched a performing new work collaboration software, which allows team-based project management in a much more efficient way.

Quality is and remains one of the priorities of the LNS. This has translated into several guidelines in the field;

• Maintain: The Luxembourg Office for Accreditation and Supervision (OLAS) has proceeded as every year to the surveillance/extension audits of the accredited services. All services passed their passing exams with flying colors.
• Improvement: The quality management system by definition is subject to continuous improvement. One of the sources of continuous improvement is the internal audit. The departments involved were able to conduct their audits on schedule and get more out of this external view.
• Expansion: The project to expand the accredited services is progressing rapidly, with two new services having passed their initial audit (OLAS) by the end of 2021: the Environmental hygiene and human biological monitoring service as well as the Technical platform for analytical toxicology and pharmaceutical chemistry.

In today’s world, quality cannot escape intelligent information management. This fundamental project for the centralization of information and processes has been piloted by the Quality Committee also called Codir-qualité. The M_Files software has been selected as it responded the specific needs of the LNS. The year 2021 was under the sign of training and adaptation of the tool.

A resumption of activity following the pandemic slowdown during 2021 allowed the standardization organizations to redouble their efforts to meet their schedule. The LNS also continued to collaborate via ILNAS (Luxembourg Institute for Standardization, Accreditation, Safety and Quality of Products and Services) on the revision of the ISO 15189 standard.

• The activity of metrology is constantly increasing and is correlated with the high activity of laboratories, particularly since the pandemic. The number of critical equipments is strongly increasing, which implies a higher demand for calibration as well.
• The level of quality offered by central metrology has been reinforced by numerous group and individual training courses.
• The end of 2021 was marked by the purchase of a temperature and environmental parameter acquisition system marketed by JRI to replace the current Labguard system, which had become obsolete. This new system will be in place during 2022 and will provide even greater reliability and performance in measurements.

• All contracts relating to the processing of personal data, in the field of the LNS’ health and research missions, were reviewed. Compliance of those contracts with article 28 of the GDPR was checked.
• New Data Protection Impact Assessment were conducted. This allows the LNS to have an overview of and control over risks affecting individuals.
• Treatments related to the COVID-19 pandemic were analysed also in 2021 and their compliance was checked. Many players were involved and all actions were urgent. We all worked together to be able to react, all the while bearing compliance rules and people’s data protection rights in mind.
• A review of the documentation required by GDPR has been initiated.