Mar 31, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
This year, one of IBM’s closely-watched picks of the technologies most likely to have the greatest impact on society is the medical lab-on-a-chip
Clinical laboratory testing and diagnostics are one of the five technologies included in IBM’s 2017 list of the technologies it predicts will have the greatest impact on society during the next five years. Of equal interest to medical laboratory professionals is that several of the other technologies included in IBM’s list have the potential be used in medical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.
IBM Research, corporate research laboratory for parent company IBM (NYSE:IBM), has more than 3,000 researchers working in 12 labs on six continents. Each year the lab releases a list of five technologies it forecasts will have the greatest influence on how our bodies, minds, society, and the planet, develop over the next five years. The list is called “5-in-5” and has been released annually for the past 10 years by the tech giant. (more…)
Mar 29, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Once thought to be separate components, the new model of a contiguous mesentery could lead to new medical laboratory tools for diagnosing and treating digestive diseases such as Crohn’s and colorectal cancer
For more than a century, pathology professionals have treated the network of tissue folds surrounding the human digestive system, known as the mesentery, as separate entities. However, new research indicates the mesentery is in fact a single, continuous organ and therefore reverses that thinking. This could impact the way pathologists and medical laboratories currently perform diagnostics and testing of digestive diseases.
Dr. J. Calvin Coffey, Professor of Surgery at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and Dr. Peter O’Leary, PhD, MBBS, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), published their findings in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology. (more…)
Mar 27, 2017 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing, Laboratory Testing, Management & Operations
CMS Director speaks at ACLA meeting; acknowledges that labs are alerting the agency to problems with Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) private payer market reporting, but did not say whether a delay in implementing either reporting or lab test fee cuts would be possible
WASHINGTON, DC—Last week, it was symbolic that, as members of the American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) assembled for their annual meeting, members of the House of Representatives were preparing to vote on the first of several bills intended to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act.
The symbolism comes from the fact that the nation’s medical laboratories and the United States Congress find themselves at major crossroad. For medical laboratories, the issue is the substantial cuts to Medicare Part B clinical laboratory test fees that are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2018. Predicted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to be a total cut of $400 million in 2018 alone, many expect these Medicare fee cuts to be the single most financially-disruptive event to hit the medical laboratory profession in 25 years.
There’s a similar make-or-break issue unfolding in Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate are caught up in battles to design and pass a series of bills intended to “repeal and replace” the ACA. At their respective crossroads, it remains unclear which path forward each group will follow. (more…)
Mar 24, 2017 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
The Technion breathalyzer would give pathology groups and medical laboratories unprecedented ability to support physicians in diagnosing and treating cancers, chronic diseases, and other illnesses
Readers of Dark Daily know that several pathology research teams in America and the UK are developing breath analyzer tests that can detect everything from lung cancer to early-stage infections. Clinical laboratories will soon have a plethora of breath-related tests from which to choose. Now there’s a new kid on the block. A breathalyzer test that can detect up to 17 distinct cancerous, inflammatory, and neurological diseases!
Assuming the cost per test was at a competitive level to existing technologies, what would give this new diagnostic system appeal to physicians and patients alike is that it would be a non-invasive way to diagnose disease. Only a sample of the patient’s breath would be needed to perform the assays.
Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion, published the results of their study in ACS Nano, a monthly journal of the American Chemical Society devoted to “nanoscience and nanotechnology research at the interfaces of chemistry, biology, materials science, physics, and engineering.” (more…)
Mar 22, 2017 | Digital Pathology, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Stanford University School of Medicine researchers grew heart muscle cells and used them, along with CRISPR, to predict whether a patient would benefit or experience bad side effects to specific therapeutic drugs
What would it mean to pathology groups if they could grow heart cells that mimicked a cardiac patient’s own cells? What if clinical laboratories could determine in vitro, using grown cells, if specific patients would have positive or negative reactions to specific heart drugs before they were prescribed the drug? How would that impact the pathology and medical laboratory industries?
We may soon know. Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine (Stanford) have begun to answer these questions. (more…)
