Jun 11, 2012 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory Pathology
Pathology profession’s leading experts in lab informatics predict plenty of disruption as hospitals work to integrate their informatics systems
DATELINE—PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA: Last Friday, what I will call the All-Stars of pathology informatics and clinical laboratory information systems (LIS) came together for a one-day Strategy Summit. Disruptive forces are loose within the laboratory informatics space and participants were eager to understand these trends and develop effective responses to keep medical laboratory testing at the forefront of clinical care.
Almost 100 pathologists, laboratory informatics vendors, LIS consultants, and hospital CIOs participated. Your Dark Daily editor was here as a careful listener. The Strategy Summit was organized by the Association for Pathology Informatics (API). API President Mark Tuthill, M.D., was chair of the program. Tuthill is also Division Head, Pathology Informatics, at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. (more…)
May 23, 2012 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Pathology
Goal of unique collaboration is to give physicians a more accurate way to diagnose and treat many types of cancer
Two noteworthy healthcare organizations will collaborate with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to explore how IBM’s Watson can be used to help physicians deliver improved outcomes to patients. The collaboration involves one major health insurer and a prominent academic medical center in Los Angeles.
WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP) will interact with oncology experts at the Cedars-Sinai Cancer Institute in Los Angeles to “educate” and program Watson as a physician’s assistant. What makes this particularly interesting for anatomic pathologists is the potential of this project to marry advances in molecular diagnostics with artificial intelligence in ways that allow physicians to diagnose different cancers earlier and with greater accuracy.
In its story about this development, the Los Angeles Times reported that, per IBM, physicians at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute will be the first to use the Watson technology.
The institute’s doctors will serve as advisers and lend expertise to help shape the initiative to develop effective ways to use Watson. “Cedars Sinai will provide the guidelines and insights to put into Watson,” stated Manoj Saxena, General Manager of IBM Watson Solutions, in a story published by Forbes Magazine.
Watson is IBM’s computing system that incorporates deep question answering technology that allows it to search quickly through vast amounts of data, then process it and analyze it in a way similar to that of the human brain. The Watson system is capable of processing the equivalent of about 200 million pages of data in about three seconds, Forbes reported.
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Jan 25, 2012 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, News From Dark Daily
Genetic testing and molecular diagnostics will be essential to wider adoption of personalized medicine by nation’s physicians
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA—Here in Silicon Valley at the Personalized Medicine World Conference (PMWC), the role of clinical laboratory testing and anatomic pathology services was consistently recognized as essential in advancing this important healthcare trend. Yet, at the same time, few pathologists or clinical laboratory executives were in attendance.
Your Dark Daily Editor, Robert L. Michel, was here at PMWC this week to speak on the topic of how medical laboratories and pathology groups will be one primary—and important—channel for helping physicians adopt and use personalized medicine in their medical practice. In simplest terms, it is typically pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals who educate doctors about the availability of new clinical lab tests and how to use them in their practice of medicine.
In that role, the medical laboratory provides physicians with information on when to order these new assays, how to interpret the lab test results, and how to use those results to determine the most appropriate therapy. Yet, here at the Personalized Medicine World Conference, developers at biotech companies seem to be overlooking this long-established fact in the clinical care marketplace. (more…)
Dec 16, 2011 | Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
More sensitive analytical technologies allow medical laboratories to perform more sophisticated tests using tiny blood specimens on paper
New breakthroughs are creating the opportunity to use “dried blood spot” (DBS) technology in an expanded number of pathology and clinical laboratory testing applications. The latest innovation was developed in the United Kingdom and allows more sophisticated applications of this decades-old screening method.
This new technology was announced in a press release that discussed the new screening method. It was developed by a research team in the UK as a rapid method for simultaneously screening patients for a range of genetic and acquired clinical conditions from a single dried blood spot.
The team consisted of researchers at King’s College of London, together with clinicians from Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. The college and the two hospitals are part of King’s Health Partners, one of the UK’s five Academic Health Sciences Centers.
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Dec 15, 2011 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Big changes in how these lab test claims are handled are just 11 weeks away, and most clinical laboratories are not up to speed on this issue
Note: Dark Daily offers this opinion and commentary by Editor Robert L. Michel
Big changes are coming in how payers handle code stacked claims for genetic tests and molecular diagnostic assays! However, few pathologists and clinical laboratory administrators understand why the collective efforts of payers to control utilization and reimbursement of these types of lab tests have the potential to undermine the financial stability of their medical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.
The year 2012 is about to arrive and, when it does, it will bring the clinical laboratory testing industry to an important crossroads. Payers—both government and private—are ready to take decisive action to rein in an area of genetic and molecular testing that they consider to be on verge of spiraling out of their control.
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