Jan 20, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
The self-monitoring/self-test market is expected to swell to $19 billion by 2019, offering opportunities for pathologists and clinical laboratories to advise patients and ensure the proper use of home tests
Might the future of clinical laboratory tests be sitting on the shelf at your corner pharmacy right now? Patient self-testing and screening kits continue to garner the approvals of Consumer Reports’ medical advisors.
That’s happening because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to clear many do-it-yourself tests that traditionally were performed in medical laboratories by qualified personnel, much to the chagrin of some doctors.
Empowered healthcare consumers are checking their cholesterol, monitoring their diabetes, and more, using health screening kits that range from $8 to $175, according to a Consumer Reports on Health article, which advised consumers to use self-tests judiciously and share the results with their physicians. (more…)
Jan 13, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Improvements in technology are enabling individuals with basic clinical laboratory knowledge to reproduce expensive medical products using low-cost, less complicated methods
Advances in technology made it possible for a group of high school students in Australia to successfully replicate the primary ingredients of a pharmaceutical drug called Pyrimethamine, which is sold under the name Daraprim. It is another demonstration of how today’s sophisticated technologies can be harnessed by individuals with minimal scientific training to produce complex products.
In recent years, Dark Daily has chronicled the successes of high school students in the United States who did the following: (more…)
Jan 6, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Clinical laboratory assays on a USB stick could become a powerful tool in the treatment and containment of HIV-1 in low-resource regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa
Imagine a small USB device that plugs into a computer and, using a small sample of blood, is capable of detecting the presence of HIV and measuring its viral load in that individual. Such technology exists and was created by a team of scientists in the United Kingdom (UK). However, it is not yet ready for use by clinical laboratories.
Researchers at Imperial College London company, DNA Electronics, have developed a diagnostic USB stick that measures the presence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as the viral load in a person’s blood, and in less than 30 minutes. The platform promises to be an important milestone for the medical laboratory treatment and containment of pandemic diseases that pose a serious threat to global health.
A story published on the mobile technology news blog Quartz pointed out that more than 24-million of the 37-million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely recognized that high cost and lack of access to medical care and clinical laboratory services remain a barrier to diagnosis, treatment, and containment of the disease. “[I]mproving diagnostics is now a key part of global strategies to combat [HIV],” wrote the study authors in a paper published in Nature Research journal Scientific Reports. (more…)
Jan 4, 2017 | Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Researchers believe they have begun to crack open a ‘black box’ involving the genomes and diseases of individual patients
Researchers in Switzerland are developing a new way to use mass spectrometry to explain why patients respond differently to specific therapies. The method potentially could become a useful tool for clinical laboratories that want to support the practice of precision medicine.
It is also one more example of how mass spectrometry is being used by researchers to develop new types of diagnostic assays that perform as well as traditional clinical laboratory testing methods, such as chemistry and immunoassay.
Thus, the latest research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich (ETHZ), will be of interest to pathology laboratory managers and medical laboratory scientists. It combines SWATH-MS (Sequential Window Acquisition of all Theoretical Mass Spectra) with genomics, transcriptomics, and other “omics,” to explain why patients respond differently to specific therapies, and to formulate a personalized strategy for individual treatment. (more…)
Dec 14, 2016 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Because of ongoing advances in gene sequencing and the data analytics needed to interpret that information, new approaches to clinical care are becoming available to physicians and pathologists
COLD SPRING HARBOR, NEW YORK—Internationally-recognized as a leader in bringing together the brightest minds in genetics, the Banbury Center at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) produced a three-day conference here last week to explore the future state of anatomic pathology and identify opportunities in genetic medicine and image sciences that play to the strengths of the nation’s pathology laboratories.
“Evolution and Revolution in Anatomic Pathology: Automation, Machine-Assisted Diagnostics, Molecular Prognostics, and Theranostics” was the title, and the meeting’s organizers were CSHL and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Northwell Health.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Founded in 1890
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has a long history and an enviable reputation. It was founded in 1890 to train teachers in biology. However, by 1904, the laboratory’s mission had been expanded to include research in genetics. In 1924, the research mission was further enlarged to include quantitative biology—in particular, physiology and biophysics.
It was in 1968 that Nobel laureate James Watson, then a professor at Harvard University, accepted the directorship of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while also keeping his professorship at Harvard University. Watson served at some level of leadership until 2008, when he became Chancellor Emeritus. Currently CSHL laboratory houses about 200 research-related personnel. (more…)
Nov 30, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
A university research team and a global diagnostics company simultaneously but independently unveil two new tests that accurately identify people predisposed to Alzheimer’s at earlier stages in the disease
Medical laboratory scientists and clinical pathologists have long awaited an accurate and clinically-useful test for the predisposition and early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Now comes pioneering efforts from two organizations that suggest real progress is being made.
One organization is an academic center and the other is an in vitro company. It was a research team at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine (RowanSOM) that announced development of the first blood test to use the body’s own immune system to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI), an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease.
Similarly, research scientists for Randox Laboratories unveiled to pathologists, clinical laboratory leaders, and others attending the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Annual Scientific Meeting, how their biochip-based technology also could be used to detect elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease. (more…)
