The Laboratory Assessment Tool is a guidance document for laboratory assessment at individual laboratory level and national laboratory system level. The tool is mainly focused on diagnostic and public health laboratories and networks of laboratories that provide clinical care services or do disease surveillance. The assessment is in the form of two questionnaires that are available as PDF or as Excel file with built-in calculation of module criteria. The tool also comes with a guide document that walks users through the assessment process. The tool is specifically targeted at laboratory managers, national legislative leaders and any stakeholder performing laboratory assessments, and is written to be country agnostic, so that each laboratory or country can apply the guidance in a way that makes sense in their national context. 

This tool was published in 2012 by the World Health Organization in collaboration with global experts. The tool was designed to help support the International Health Regulations (IHR), which require WHO Member states to build national capacity to conduct surveillance and early disease detection capability. A strong laboratory system is crucial to proper public health infrastructure and this framework provides a standardized approach for assessing a system's capabilities. The tool is available in English, French, Spanish, and Russian. The tool has also been adapted to support response to disease-specific events such as Ebola Virus Disease in 2015 and COVID-19 in 2020.