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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Consumers Increasingly Purchase Medical Laboratory Self-Test Kits for Blood Glucose, Cholesterol, and Colon Cancer Screening, according to Consumer Reports

The self-monitoring/self-test market is expected to swell to $19 billion by 2019, offering opportunities for pathologists and clinical laboratories to advise patients and ensure the proper use of home tests

Might the future of clinical laboratory tests be sitting on the shelf at your corner pharmacy right now? Patient self-testing and screening kits continue to garner the approvals of Consumer Reports’ medical advisors.

That’s happening because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to clear many do-it-yourself tests that traditionally were performed in medical laboratories by qualified personnel, much to the chagrin of some doctors.

Empowered healthcare consumers are checking their cholesterol, monitoring their diabetes, and more, using health screening kits that range from $8 to $175, according to a Consumer Reports on Health article, which advised consumers to use self-tests judiciously and share the results with their physicians. (more…)

New Miniature Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices from DexCom and Verily (Google Life Sciences) Promise to Make Glucose Monitoring Wearable and Affordable

Such a small, non-invasive glucose monitor would capture and transmit data to the Cloud, making it feasible for clinical laboratories to collect those tests results, and keep a record of each patient’s glucose results

Probably no single area of medical laboratory testing has the greatest potential to help the largest number of patients with a chronic disease—and make a lot of money for the in vitro (IVD) manufacturer who is first to market with the right diagnostic product—than glucose testing and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers know why this is true.

Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Diabetes Association, state that more than 29 million Americans (about 9% of the U.S. population) have diabetes. Nearly 28% of these (about eight million) are undiagnosed. The reports also stipulate that fasting glucose or A1C levels have shown that more than 80 million people over the age of 20 were prediabetic in 2012. Based on trends since then, we can safely assume that the number of prediabetics in America has grown. And what is true in the United States is general true in most developed nations throughout the world. (more…)

Nanotechnology-Based Medical Laboratory Test Chip Developed at Stanford University Detects Type-1 Diabetes in Minutes and Can Be Used in Doctors’ Offices

Developers seeking FDA Approval for microchip-based nanotechnology type-1 diabetes test, which has been performed on people with accurate results

New nanotechnology has made it possible for a team at Stanford University School of Medicine to develop a medical laboratory test for type-1 diabetes that can be performed in a physician’s office and does not require a specimen collected by venipuncture.

This microchip requires just minutes to diagnose type-1 diabetes in near-patient settings, according to a Stanford University news release. (more…)

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