The applicant should have preferably completed relevant training or experience as primary requirements to qualify for the laboratory animal medicine specialty certification. The applicant who have completed formal training program after the graduation (B.V.Sc) such as FELASA “C”/ “D”, NCLAS, Hyderabad; CFTRI, Mysore; CDRI, Lucknow etc. will be given preference. The training program standards are established primarily to improve the quality and consistency of laboratory animal medicine training programs in order to strengthen their ability to prepare trainees for the ICLAM examination. The training program should clearly define how the program is structured in order to meet the standards and annual reports are reviewed by Training and Certification Committee (“TCC” hereunder) thereafter, recommend to the Governing Council (“GC” hereunder) of ICLAM. The candidate must be a member of Laboratory Animal Scientists Association (“LASA, India” hereunder) for at least one year prior to appearing for the examination

1.1. The affiliated Diplomate must provide oversight of at least 1 year of the program. One Diplomate can register only two residents in the program per year. In addition, candidates will be encouraged to participate in other institutions based on program requirements and species involved to fulfil the training requirements which may include short course / workshop / seminars and conference participation. An established mechanism should be there to assess the ongoing activities of the quality of trainings.

1.2. The training programs are framed in order to meet the knowledge required for a laboratory animal medicine specialist. The training criteria is provided in the ICLAM role delineation document (“RDD” hereunder), that include the combination of supervised experience, didactic instruction and mentored project of the practice of laboratory animal medicine. It is encouraged to attend the seminars or courses apart from 200 hours of didactic training including hands-on experience during the course of the training program.

1.3. The candidates are trained on clinical care, disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention; diagnostic pathology, surgery and post-operative care, animal resource management including regulatory requirements. Training programs are preferred in institutions that are committed to the humane care and use of laboratory animals preferably AAALAC accredited as well as adhering CPCSEA recommendations for the trainings depending upon the species involved. However, there is a limit of one week (40 hrs) per species and maximum two weeks (80 hours) at any one centre.

1.4. Programs must evaluate the effectiveness of training periodically and are required to implement any changes needed for the candidates. In addition, the trainee should update progress at least quarterly basis to the Governing Council through his/her mentor. The self-assessment / recertification is mandatory at least once in eight years. If any candidate does not meet the requirement of training and/or residency period, the mentor must forward this information to the TCC for the assessment. A suitable corrective action plan will be devised by the Governing Council to meet the pre-requirements by the candidate before appearing for the board examination. In case, the candidate is not able to take up the examination for any reasons, he/she has to renew the registration for subsequent year by paying the applicable fees.

2.1. Experience Route (Option-1)

The candidates after the receipt of B.V.Sc & AH (veterinary sciences) degree followed by 6 years of experience and M.V.Sc or Ph.D with 4 years of relevant, full-time experience in laboratory animal medicine field are be eligible to apply. However, professional employment pursued in parallel cannot be considered twice to meet the experience of candidate and duration is calculated up to the application timelines. The experience can be combined both time and quality component apart from the credit of at least 60 % of work profile should be on laboratory animal medicine. The laboratory animal specialist direct performance or participation broadly includes the following activities,

2.1.1. Clinical medicine involving laboratory animal species

2.1.2. Breeding and maintenance including transgenic animal models

2.1.3. Health monitoring and diagnostic procedures

2.1.4. Laboratory animal import and quarantine process

Attending workshop / seminars / short course / conference etc. on laboratory animal science will be added advantage. The experienced veterinarians may be eligible to appear directly for the examination based on their experience after successfully completing training of 12 months as per the Role Delineation Document (RDD).

2.2. Residency Program (Option-2)

The candidates with similar experience (sr.no 2.1) will be enrolled with the Founder / De facto/ regular Diplomate members where the MoU is established in AAALAC / GLP / State or Central Research Institutions / University etc. The ICLAM Governing Council will ensure the availability of primary species (other species will be exposed during the didactic rotational training period along with experience route candidates in order to cover the species of RDD prior to become eligible and appear for the board examination). Moreover, the Governing Council will evaluate the residency program from time to time and encourage candidates. Since, the ICLAM is under establishment mode and at least initial 3 batches of subsequent years will enroll candidates under experience route of training program based on the current level of resources, residency program will be considered for the initial batches, wherever possible. ICLAM will introduce the regular ‘Residency’ route in the future.

After meeting the above requirements, candidates may appear for the certifying examination by covering the following areas (refer Role Delineation Document for details).

3.1. Biology of laboratory animals.

3.2. Laboratory animal resource management including design and operations of vivarium.

3.3. Clinical laboratory animal medicine including surgery and post-operative care.

3.4. Laboratory animal pathology.

3.5. Prevention and health monitoring programs.

3.6. Research support and animal experimentation by adopting 3R’s principles.

3.7. Regulatory requirements, law and animal welfare.

(The candidate must meet the eligibility of minimum 10 points during the selection)

4.1. First author of a paper involving laboratory animal science and medicine or vivarium aspects on a peer reviewed journal (2 points per article - Maximum 4 points).

4.2. SCI Journal / SCI-E / NAAS Journal - 2 points per article (maximum 4 points)

4.3. Journal of Laboratory Animal Science - 1 point per article (maximum 2 points)

4.4. Co-authors / corresponding authors (0.5 point per article and maximum of 2 points)

4.5. Relevant experience of research / experiments on laboratory animals including vivarium resource management. Experience of two years (1 point); 3 years (1.5 point); 4 years (2 points); 5 years (2.5 points); 6 years (3 points); 7 years (3.5 points); 8 years (4 points); 9 years (4.5 points); 10 years (5 points) - Maximum of 5 points considered.

4.6. Academic degree - M.V.Sc 2 points; Doctorate 4 points; - Maximum of 4 points considered

4.7. Oral / poster presentations (1 point each maximum of 5 points) at Laboratory Animal Scientist’s Association (LASA); Asian Federation of Laboratory Animal Science (AFLAS) organizations; Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Association (FELASA); American Association of Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS). Presentations in biomedical science meetings other than LASA (1 point each and maximum of 5 points considered).

4.8. Participation in workshops / short course or certification / attending conference of above associations (1 point each and maximum of 5 points considered).

4.9. Conducting laboratory animal science and ethics related workshops (2 points) and hosting LASA conferences (3 points) as part of organizing committee. Continuing education resource person for hands-on training and teaching at workshop of ICLAM (2 points for 3 hours of training - maximum of 10 points considered).

4.10. The Diplomates shall accumulate at least 100 credit points as cumulative without any maximum cutoff points (sr. no 4.1 to 4.9) as part of continuing education over the period of eight years prior to appearing for recertification. The Diplomates will be required to produce documents while applying for recertification. However, there is no minimum criteria as described (4.1 to 4.9) above and credit points shall be calculated as cumulative.

The publication demonstrates that the candidates have a working knowledge of scientific method employed in the laboratory animal science. The candidate serving as first author of an original research article demonstrates application of the scientific method. This article must be published in a peer-reviewed / NAAS rated journal using laboratory animals and must be accepted at the time of application. However, the manuscript under review or conditionally accepted with revisions are not considered until the final acceptance by the journal for publication. Minimum 3 publications in a NAAS rated journal (2 as first author and 1 as co-author) will be the eligibility to register and appear for the board examination

6.1. Paper I - A total of 100 objective questions with 4 multiple choices

6.2. Paper II - A total of 80 objective questions with 4 multiple choices as well as 20 clinical diagnosis

6.3. The board may allow candidates to reappear for examination with prescribed fees.

6.4. Question bank
Different series of multiple choice questions (MCQ) will be prepared based on six domain mentioned in the RDD and questions are expected to set within the tasks and knowledge indicated by covering the species. The test questions will be scattered across the primary species (60-70%); secondary (20-30%) and tertiary (5-10%).

6.5. Evaluation pattern
The cut off mark will be 60% in each module. Candidates who do not get 60% marks in any of the modules, will get additional 2 chances to clear those papers/ modules while appearing for examination in the subsequent years.