News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Clinical Chemists and Medical Laboratory Scientists Gather in Chicago for American Association of Clinical Chemistry and ASCLS Joint Meeting

Among the hundreds of lab industry vendors exhibiting, there were more companies showing LIS and lab informatics products this year than last year

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—Anytime 20,000 clinical chemists and medical laboratory scientists gather in the same place, at the same time, there is sure to be many different opinions about the state of laboratory medicine and key trends in the clinical laboratory testing marketplace.

That was certainly true of this year’s annual meetings of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) and the American Society of Clinical Laboratory Scientists (ASCLS) that took place here in the Windy City and ended yesterday. Your Dark Daily editor was in attendance and saw many interesting things during the exhibition, which opened on Tuesday and closed Thursday.

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Clinical Chemists and Medical Laboratory Professionals Gather at AACC’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta

Lots of products involving molecular diagnostics and genetic testing were on display at the exhibition

DATELINE: Atlanta, Georgia—Yesterday was the close of the 2011 annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC). Organizers played host to what—pre-event—they announced was a record-breaking number of exhibit booths sold to vendors at the exhibition. Despite a rather quiet economy, there was plenty of traffic and much interest in products on display in the clinical laboratory.

Many lab industry vendors believe that there is pent-up demand by medical laboratories because of the long recession in 2008 and 2009, combined with the clamp-down on laboratory spending that resulted as hospitals and health systems slashed budgets during the recession to protect their cash flows. But now, having deferred equipment replacement for up to three full years, a number of clinical pathology laboratories have returned to the marketplace to acquire new medical laboratory testing equipment.

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Clinical Laboratory Tests as a Commodity: Why Government Health Programs Won’t Spend More

Speakers from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada provide useful prospectives


Too often, pathology laboratory testing is treated as a commodity by government health officials in the United States and other countries. But treating lab testing as a commodity has negative long-term consequences for health systems which try to pay the cheapest price for medical laboratory testing.

As pathologists and clinical laboratory managers know all too well, clinical pathology laboratory testing delivers incredible value when physicians order the right test and do the appropriate thing with the lab test results. Examples abound where proper use of laboratory testing contributes to improved patient outcomes while reducing the overall cost per episode of care.

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Somber Mood Prevails at Nation’s Largest Gathering of Laboratory Testing Professionals

AACC’s annual meeting still offers impressive array of scientific sessions and exhibits

Yesterday ended the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) in Chicago, Illinois. Your Dark Daily team was there to ferret out anything new and interesting and to sniff out the latest trends in the business of laboratory testing.

As expected, this year’s event was considerably subdued. Attendance was clearly down, even though the exhibition hall featured more than 650 exhibitors—a number comparable to last year. But the exuberance of recent years was gone. For example, AACC did not make a public address announcement in the exhibit hall to announce the total number of attendees this year and thank everyone—at least not when your Dark Daily editor was in the exhibit hall. Speculation was that this year’s total attendance was down from the 20,000+ attendees in each of recent years. Estimates were that the attendance decline ranged from 20% to 30% fewer attendees.

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