Competition Heats Up and Laboratory Management Becomes a Value-Added Service for Abbott Laboratories and other IVD Firms

In the competitive marketplace for laboratory analyzers and reagents, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) manufacturers are taking definitive steps to differentiate themselves. For these efforts to be successful, they must add value to laboratory customers. That's one reason why Abbot Laboratories recently launched a Web site called Labs Are Vital.

This Web site targets laboratory professionals. The site provides articles, polls, news, and illustrations in an easy-to-read and engaging format. Labs Are Vital says that it is "a new program dedicated to helping you change the status quo by spotlighting the value of the laboratorian and serving as a community for laboratory professionals." One obvious goal is to advance laboratory management skills while providing documentation about the essential role that laboratories play in the healthcare system.

In the Top Stories section, laboratory industry thought leaders, like Robert Michel of The Dark Report, comment on trends in laboratory management and medicine. Michel contributed a recent article entitled Testing Gets Personalized that argues that clinical laboratories that recognize the potential of highly personalized testing offerings have bright financial futures. Other regular sections include Lab News, Lab Chat, and Top Stories that provide daily leadership tips and conducts daily instant polls on topics important to laboratorians.

Why, we must ask ourselves, has Abbott gone to so much trouble to provide laboratorians with free information? The IVD manufacturer is working to add value to the laboratory industry and using the Internet as a delivery channel. It’s new Web site is one way to build a community of laboratorians and laboratory thought leaders. Further, the design of this Web site can actively engage these lab industry leaders by asking them to participate in quick surveys, email lists, article feedback, and instant polls. Abbott will undoubtedly use this list of interested and engaged laboratorians to promote their own product, but at the same time, Abbott is making useful information more easily accessible.

Further, Abbott's "Labs are Vital" Web site demonstrates how the Internet will be used to build specific communities. The Internet allows these communities to be interconnected and integrated. Going forward, it may networks, or rings, of these types of Web sites which draw together hospital laboratorians, commercial lab executives, anatomic pathologists, and lab industry vendors and allow them to lobby effectively on all types of issues relevant to laboratory medicine. If that happens, it will help raise the lab industry's profile and clout with policymakers and legislatures. It will also work to the long-term benefit of the laboratory medicine profession.

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