Jan 19, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Experts predict a surge in the number of physicians using electronic medical record systems
By dangling as much as $20 billion in front of physicians to encourage their adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems during the next few years, Congress has created a new and expensive challenge for the nation’s clinical laboratories. That challenge is the need for every pathology laboratory to establish a high-function interface from its LIS to the office-based physician’s EMR.
According to one expert, the government’s “carrot and stick” strategy to reward doctors financially for adopting EMR’s, will soon force independent medical laboratories and hospital laboratory outreach programs to play catch up with LIS-EMR interfaces to maintain access to physician referrals and the revenue that accompanies these laboratory test specimens.
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Jan 17, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Enriched exchange of digital pathology images and clinical knowledge is the goal
Digital scanning and digital pathology systems represent a major transformational force in the field of anatomic pathology. Momentum in favor of wider adoption by pathologists and pathology laboratories continues to build, reinforced, in part, by an interesting new development, which one pathologist calls “Pathology 2.0.”
Pathology 2.0 describes how Web 2.0 functions can be integrated with digital imaging and digital pathology systems to improve the productivity and quality of pathology workflow. It was Keith Kaplan, M.D., Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who first articulated the intersection of digital scanning and digital pathology systems with Web 2.0 functions as the core of Pathology 2.0, a term he coined.
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Jan 11, 2010 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Proteus Biomedical, Inc. prepares to launch a “smart pill” to remotely monitor how medication affects patients.
If some experts are correct, it won’t take long to create ingestible devices that are capable of conducting clinical laboratory tests within the body. These devices would transmit the laboratory test results to physicians over the Internet by using wireless technology.
As soon as 2011, Proteus Medical, Inc., of Redwood City, California, says it expects to introduce an ingestible device for managing heart disease and chronic disease to the clinical market. Proteus named this device the Raisin System and a popular term for this type of technology is “smart pill.”
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Dec 22, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, News From Dark Daily
U.K.’s most popular pathology laboratory management event set for January 26-27, 2010 in Birmingham
In the United Kingdom and Europe, pathology and clinical laboratory services are transforming at a steady rate. This is particularly true in the England, where the National Health Service (NHS) is actively emphasizing earlier diagnosis and intervention and chronic disease management in primary care by general practitioners. In turn, pathology laboratories in that country are aligning laboratory testing services to improve clinical outcomes and support new and evolving healthcare priorities.
These and other important developments in laboratory medicine will be front and center at the upcoming Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine 2010 (FILM), which takes place on January 26-27, 2010 at the Austin Court in Birmingham, England. FiLM brings together innovators and leaders in pathology testing from the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America to share their most important breakthroughs in pathology management and operations.
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Dec 14, 2009 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology
Response to comments from Dennis Ernst of the Center for Phlebotomy Education
Recently Dark Daily alerted clinical laboratory readers to a decision by The Joint Commission to change their requirements for patient identification. Included was the opinion of Dennis Ernst, MT(ASCP), long time Director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, that The Joint Commission’s decision to change patient identification requirements was a step backwards in patient safety. (See Dark Daily, “Joint Commission Changes Requirement for Patient ID during Blood Draws” ).
In particular, Ernst was troubled that the new patient identification protocols no longer require a healthcare worker to have the patient state his or her name before blood is drawn. He contacted The Joint Commission to inquire about this change. He related to Dark Daily that officials at TJC had informed him that, in their surveys of clients, there was a feeling that this specific requirement was “burdensome and unnecessary.”
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