Oct 23, 2012 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
CRM is a new product category for medical laboratory middleware and delivers real-time dashboards that drive higher levels of lab performance and client service
Within the clinical laboratory industry, there’s an interesting conjunction of two fast-moving trends. One trend is the growing use of middleware by medical laboratories of all sizes. The second trend is the goal of converting any type of manual work process in the lab into an automated work process.
These trends often intersect when clinical laboratories and pathology groups use middleware to automate manual processes. One common example is when a lab purchases a middleware solution that handles auto-validation. After implementation, auto-validation eliminates the need for medical technologists to manually review all the individual test results. (more…)
Jun 20, 2012 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing
Business Intelligence software now allows for real-time data capture, analysis and evaluation of medical laboratory operations
For clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups across the nation, the latest use of middleware is for business intelligence. This is a brand-new trend, as only first-mover and early adopter medical laboratories have acquired and currently use some type of middleware solution that delivers business intelligence.
One-by-one, laboratory informatics companies are crafting middleware products specifically designed to deliver business intelligence to their customers and clients. Business Intelligence (BI) is a computer-based approach to collecting and analyzing business data. A flurry of activity in the laboratory informatics sector reinforces the importance of health IT and healthcare analytics in an increasingly competitive medical laboratory testing market. (more…)
Dec 4, 2008 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
California is often a national leader for innovations in managed care contracting, as well as new approaches for delivering healthcare. So when your Dark Daily editor visited the laboratory at the UCLA Medical Center this week, he was quite curious about the ways in which clinical laboratory testing and anatomic pathology services are being used at this respected national academic center.
For one thing, UCLA has recently moved into a brand new hospital building. The Ronald Reagan Medical Center is a 525 bed facility (all single patient rooms) and is designed to be state-of-the-art. The UCLA Medical Center is also a world-class institution. It is proudly flying banners throughout the campus which recognize its selection by U.S. News and World Report as the nation’s number 3 best hospital. (Are you interested in which hospitals are ranked 1 and 2? We provide a list of U.S. News & World Report’s Top Ten Best Hospitals at the end of this e-briefing.)
Exciting things are unfolding at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In a briefing session with Scott W. Binder, M.D., Senior Vice Chair, Pathology Clinical Services and Chief, Dermatopathology, your Dark Daily editor learned about a collaborative effort with the Department of Radiology and the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology to develop integrated patient care pathways in several different types of cancers. The particular focus is on lung cancer, melanoma, and breast cancer. The goal is to develop an integrated report which incorporates the radiology components with the pathology report. Molecular assays will be used so that the report emphasizes information about prognostic genes and the most appropriate therapeutic options for the patient. This is an effort to integrate in vivo and in vitro diagnostics to advance patient care.
Over in the clinical laboratory, there were several interesting things that are unique to the UCLA Medical Center. At the 10-story Ronald Reagan Medical Center building, there is a new core laboratory. However, competition for space within the facility meant that the clinical laboratory did not get all the square footage it required to centralize all laboratory testing activities across the campus into one site. Consequently, there are at least four different locations where significant laboratory testing activity takes place.
For example, a medical building next to the new hospital holds a large patient drawing center (serving an average of 500 patients per day). This space also has the accessioning center for routine specimens, along with a fully automated pre-analytical line supplied by Beckman Coulter that includes specimen sorting, de-capping, centerfuging, aliquotting, and re-capping. Prepped specimens are then sent next door to the new core laboratory in the Reagan Medical Center for testing. At the core laboratory, different academic experts supported their “best of breed” choices for analyzers. Thus, the automated line is by Beckman Coulter, while Roche and Olympus supplied chemistry and immunoassay analyzers. PT/PTT testing is done on a system by Siemens (Dade Bering), and hematology is performed on a Sysmex automated line. The clinical laboratory performs tests for inpatients, outpatients, and outreach patients.
Dark Daily summarizes this day of site visits and learning with two observations. First, UCLA’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is proactively crossing traditional medical specialty silos to support collaboration with a goal to advancing personalized medicine. For that reason, expect to see some interesting research breakthroughs, particularly in the areas of molecular and genetic testing, from the UCLA pathology department.
Second, the competition for limited resources in healthcare was visible at the new Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Even in a new, state-of-the-art facility, demand for space by all the clinical services was so intense that the clinical laboratory had to settle for a space allotment that made it impossible for them to consolidate all major laboratory testing facilities into a single location.
Related Information:
U.S. Hospitals Honor Roll
Top Ten Hospitals as Ranked by U.S. World & News Report in 2008:
1. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
30 points in 15 specialties
2. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
28 points in 15 specialties
3. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
25 points in 14 specialties
4. Cleveland Clinic
25 points in 13 specialties
5. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
24 points in 12 specialties
6. New York-Presbyterian Univ. Hosp. of Columbia and Cornell
22 points in 12 specialties
7. University of California, San Francisco Medical Center
21 points in 11 specialties
8. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
18 points in 11 specialties
9. Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.
18 points in 11 specialties
10. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
18 points in 10 specialties
Nov 26, 2008 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Aptly nicknamed “Dr. Germ,” Charles P. Gerba, Ph.D., a microbiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, has made headlines recently with his list of the “10 Germiest Jobs in America.” Not surprisingly, lab scientist ranks number five. What job does Dr. Germ consider the germiest? Number one on his list was teachers and day care workers. (more…)
Nov 21, 2008 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Here’s another example of taking existing laboratory technology and applying it in a new way. A scientist at Queen’s University Belfast in the United Kingdom is using an existing technology to create what he describes as “intelligent molecules,” capable of identifying tags in human cells that could signal the presence of organisms common in an epidemic. They also could be use to track infections in a population and identify patients who would be vulnerable to certain infections.
This new application of existing technology earned A. Prasanna de Silva, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Organic Chemistry at Queen’s University, the 2008 Royal Society of Chemistry’s Sensors Award, sponsored by GE Healthcare. The award is given biannually for chemical input into the design of novel sensors or novel applications of existing sensors.
The technology incorporates fluorescent “catch and tell” sensors that emit light signals when they catch chemicals in the blood. It is familiar technology to most laboratories, as it is incorporated into in blood diagnostic cassettes sold worldwide. Hospitals, ambulances, veterinarians, and others use this fluorescent sensor technology to monitor blood for levels of common salt components such as sodium, potassium, and calcium.
The worldwide market for this type of blood diagnostic cassettes totals $50 million. Roche Diagnostics Inc. uses the fluorescent sensor technology in the chemistry module of the OPTI point-of-care blood analyzer, a module that has produced worldwide sales of $39 million.
Using an extension of the same design, de Silva has developed molecules that act as ‘logic gates,’ which are similar to the mechanisms in computers. De Silva and colleagues at Queen’s University are using these molecular logic gates as identification tags for objects the size of biological cells.
The new application could be used in a variety of clinical and other settings, de Silva said. “One such use could be as an ID tag for cells in an epidemic, such as a bird-flu outbreak,” he explained. “From a population, our sensor molecules could help track infection and highlight vulnerable people. Another one is a ‘lab-on-a-molecule’ system which combines several lab tests with a rudimentary diagnosis without human intervention.”
This example demonstrates how advances in science, combined with the ongoing ability to continually shrink the size of diagnostic analyzers, will package long-established and familiar diagnostic technologies in new ways. It is a reminder that, outside today’s clinical laboratory, large numbers of research projects and biotech companies are rapidly developing new assays. It is one reason why laboratory medicine is almost overwhelmed by the daily and weekly stream of press releases and product launches for new biomarkers and new laboratory tests.
Related Information:
New ‘Catch-And-Tell’ Molecules Designed By Queen’s Chemist
New ‘Catch-and-tell’ Molecules Send Out Light Signals When They Catch Chemicals In Blood
