Apr 7, 2017 | Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
Medical laboratories now taking the steps to deliver patient-centric lab testing services report solid successes in improving patient/physician satisfaction, increasing lab revenue, and gaining more network access
Evidence is accumulating that “patient-centric” medical laboratory testing services are poised to become one of the most important new paradigms to reshape the house of pathology and clinical laboratory medicine in decades. Better yet, patient-centric lab services will earn more revenue for those labs that move fastest to incorporate these capabilities into their service mix.
“The paradigm of patient-center lab testing services couldn’t come at a better time for the clinical laboratory industry. Most labs are reeling from what is now nearly a full decade of successive and painful reductions in lab test prices and lab budgets,” observed Robert Michel, Editor-in-Chief of The Dark Report, which is Dark Daily’s sister publication. “After years of aggressive cost-cutting, most labs are down to the bare essentials and staff is overworked. That is why there is an urgent need for an operational and clinical strategy that will earn more payment from payers. (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 23, 2016 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
With more medical laboratories making progress on improving the operational performance of their labs, and the level of service they provide to their clients, they are finding it essential to have real-time analytics and healthcare relationship management systems
In today’s world of clinical laboratory medicine, the pace of daily operations continues to increase. Everything happens faster as the nation’s leading medical laboratories apply Lean and other process improvement methods to speed up workflow with the goal of shortening lab test turnaround times.
However, those labs making progress on doing more faster and in less time have a challenge: they require information systems and software that can feed essential information to lab managers and staff in real time. It is for this reason that some of the best-selling informatics products in the clinical laboratory industry these days are middleware solutions and healthcare relationship management (HRM) solutions that support real-time analytics and help medical labs improve their client service.
In the past, clinical laboratories and pathology groups often developed in-house solutions to help manage data and generate reports. While data in these systems often drove diagnostic decisions, with the pace of technological change and demands for reduced turnaround times (TATs), these systems often struggled to provide: (more…)
Jun 6, 2016 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Utah-based Tute Genomics and UNIConnect will partner with Newborn Screening Ontario to uncover rare but treatable diseases in newborns
In the Canadian province of Ontario, next-generation gene sequencing will soon be part of newborn screening. This development is another confirmation for clinical laboratory managers and pathologists that genetic information from such diagnostic testing is contributing to improvements in clinical care.
Newborn Screening Ontario (NSO) is teaming up with Tute Genomics of Provo, Utah, and UNIConnect of Sandy, Utah, to enhance the province’s testing program for rare but treatable diseases in newborns.
The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care is contracting with NSO to offer a next-generation sequencing testing panel and a multiple ligation-dependent probe amplification assay for the diagnostic confirmation of a variety of disorders. (more…)
Feb 26, 2016 | Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
This healthcare big data project’s tools and predictive models involve real-time monitoring of patient data and are expected to be available soon to other to providers
One healthcare big data project has begun to report progress on using predictive analytics to improve patient care in the diagnosis and management of such health conditions as sepsis and heart failure. This pioneering effort is being done at the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s (Penn Medicine’s), Institute for Biomedical Informatics (IBI).
What will be of high interest for pathologists and clinical laboratory executives is how this big data project incorporates lab test results into the effort.
Recently, Penn Medicine announced Penn Signals, a big-data project that, in part, relies on the lab data housed in the academic medical center’s laboratory information system (LIS) as well as its outpatient and inpatient data house in its electronic health record (EHR) system. (more…)
