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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Point-of-Care Testing Conference Draws Big Crowd in Toronto to Learn about New Diagnostic Technologies, Improving Test Quality, and Accuracy

Ontario’s Institute for Quality Management in Healthcare convened the conference to help advance the effective use of point-of-care-testing by clinical laboratories

DATELINE—Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Interest in point-of-care testing (POCT) is strong in Canada. Evidence of that comes from a crowd of more than 240 clinical laboratory professionals and in vitro diagnostics (IVD) vendors who attended the “The Future of Point-of-Care Testing—A Healthy Debate!” conference here last week.

The meeting was organized by the Institute for Quality Management in Healthcare (IQMH). Based in Toronto, IQMH provides the ISO 15189 accreditation services used by medical laboratories in Ontario to meet the province’s lab licensure requirements. IQMH also handles lab accreditation for several other provinces.

“Because of the ever-greater use of POCT in clinical settings throughout Canada, IQMH has organized this conference regularly in recent years,” stated pathologist Gregory J. Flynn, MD, CEO of IQMH. “It is one of the few clinical laboratory programs that brings together experts and users to discuss issues of quality, clinical relevance, and the challenges in using point-of-care testing in support of patient care.” (more…)

Pathologists in Canada Address Handling and Use of Tissue Specimens for Clinical Diagnostic Purposes at IQMH Conference in Toronto

Variability in how tissue is handled from one histopathology laboratory to another greatly affects quality of specimen and accuracy of the pathologist’s diagnosis

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA—Here on the shores of Lake Ontario, pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals gathered last week for a unique conference that focused on quality issues involving how tissue is handled from collection and transport to the histopathology laboratory processing to diagnosis by surgical pathologists.

Your Dark Daily editor was here to participate in the conference and learn from a first-rank panel of speakers. As many long-time readers know, patients, physicians, and health insurers expect increasingly higher levels of accuracy in how lab specimens are handled and greater precision in the resulting diagnosis that is produced by pathologists. Thus, a conference dedicated to tissue specimen integrity and quality is both timely and appropriate. (more…)

John Hopkins Researchers Demonstrate Hydrogen Peroxide’s Effectiveness in Preventing HAIs, May Have Use in Clinical Pathology Laboratories

The study found that a Robotic vapor-dispersing device kills and prevents spread of Drug-Resistant Organisms in high-risk patients by 64%

There is a new technology for disinfecting healthcare facilities that is likely to be useful for clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups.

A team at Johns Hopkins University Hospital recently published a study about their institution’s use of hydrogen peroxide vapor to disinfect hospital rooms.

The study was conducted over two and one-half years and involved hospital rooms used by thousands of patients. The goal of this study was to verify the effectiveness of a new robot-like device, known as Bioquell Q-10. This system disperses a hydrogen peroxide vapor to disinfect hospital rooms and was described in a news release issued by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University Hospital. (more…)

New Disinfection Technique for Hospital Rooms Will Be Useful to Clinical Pathology Laboratories

Vapor-based fumigant system could prove useful in disinfecting microbiology labs, clinical labs, and histology labs

There’s a new technology that bears great promise for improving existing methods of disinfecting hospital rooms and health facilities, including clinical laboratories. This pioneering work was developed as part of a collaboration involving infection control expert Dick Zoutman, M.D., FRCPC, who is affiliated with Queen’s University of Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

This technology is a vapor-based fumigant system and is coming to market with the name AsepticSure. It will be sold by Medizone International, Inc.. The invention makes a strong argument for changing the way hospital rooms and other healthcare facilities are disinfected. (more…)

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