Quality control via round robin tests
If a parameter is determined with different test systems the results must still be comparable. This sounds simple, but is hard to achieve.
Milestone for Hemo Control Haemoglobin Analyser
EKF Diagnostics has recently marked the production at its manufacturing facility in Barleben, Germany, of the 33,333rd Hemo Control, its globally successful haemoglobin point-of-care analyser, since its launch in 2003.
Space: US exams come down to earth
Remote US examinations is not science-fiction; they are now available for real-time diagnostics.
"Excellence across Borders" fosters practical diabetes management
Bayer HealthCare supports local projects under the "Excellence across Borders" program in order to improve care of people with diabetes. Among the projects is a Diabetic School Awareness Program in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is planned to start in autumn this year.
Smoking leads to five-fold increase in heart disease and stroke
Smoking increases the risk of heart disease and stroke by five-fold in people under the age of 50 and doubles risk in the over-60s.
Spanish Hospital presents its sepsis code at international forum
Hospital Marina Salud de Dénia presented its Sepsis Code at the National Health IT Conference and Exhibition, which recently took place in Birmingham, UK.
Strategic lab control
Managing physicians’ test requests is a key ingredient of modern lab management. However, doctors and nurses still do not provide the clinical reasons for orders to all labs.
Big Iron meets Big Data
Lab instruments are marvels of modern technology able to dice, splice and analyse microscopic specimens. Yet pushing the results into modern medical reporting systems is as slow, and often as painful, as pulling teeth.
Infectious diseases
Switzerland treads softly when it comes to governing its 26 independent-minded cantons. Yet, when it comes to electronic medical records, the Ministry of Health holds a particular power, not to dare to direct policy inside any canton, but for the exchange of data between the cantons
Point of care testing
Demand is increasing for point of care (POC) diagnostic testing, particularly for tests that help foster clinical decision-making within 30 minutes or less.
Two new lab launches
Beckman Coulter, Inc. has released a new bench-top haematology analyser for mid- to high-volume laboratories, and upgraded software for HematoFlow.
Epigenetic drugs
‘All human body cells contain the same DNA, but every type of cell – for example a muscle cell compared to that of a nerve – has a different gene expression pattern’, said Dr Sonja Stadler, speaking at the 2012 congress of DGKL (German Society for Clinical Chemistry).
'Status quo bias' affecting take up rate for bowel cancer screening
The NHS has to overcome people’s ‘status-quo bias’ if it is to increase the number of screenings for bowel cancer.
POCT testing technology
Julian Baines, Group CEO of EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc, considers the present role of point of-care tests and their potential value to health services
Digital pathology
Although evolving as a tool in medical pathology for years, several factors have hampered its widespread use in this field. Now, a Scientific American article asserts that the time has come for a digital imaging revolution.
Disambiguation
A new system might help to analyse unstructured clinical documentation, such as lab/pathology results, thus tapping a wealth of hidden information.
The nose knows
Cliff, a two-year-old beagle, has recently demonstrated his talent for detecting Clostridium difficile according to doctors at the Vrije University Medical Centre (VUMC) in Amsterdam.
Marriage reduces the risk of heart attack
A large population-based study from Finland has shown that being unmarried increases the risk of fatal and non-fatal heart attack in both men and women whatever their age.
Sepsis diagnosis and treatment
‘We need an ECG for Sepsis,’ urged Professor Konrad Reinhart during this year’s Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (HAI) Congress in Berlin.
MRSA, C Difficile, staphylococcus
A recent webinar, hosted by the American Association of Clinical Chemistry, featured doctors Duane Newton of the University of Michigan and Susan Novak-Weekly of Kaiser Permanente.
Controlling antimicrobial resistance
There is no other way: We need a comprehensive approach, with everyone living up to their responsibility to combat this serious health threat in their respective areas. The most basic instinct of every living organism is survival. What selects one organism or species over another, in fact, is its capacity to withstand any kind of adverse condition that comes its way – what scientist Herbert…
Mass spectrometry
‘Mass spectrometry has developed into a successful routine procedure,’ according to Dr Christoph Seger (Univ. Doz.), technical head of the Mass Spectrometry and Chromatography division at the Central Institute of Medical and Chemical Laboratory Diagnostics, Innsbruck University Hospital, Austria.
Nosocomial infections
As in so many European countries, nosocomial infections have hit the headlines in Germany over and over again in recent years – as when three premature babies died in a Bremen neonatal clinic in 2011.
Promise for controlling'blood-brain barrier'
Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have shed light on the activity of a protein pair found in cells that form the walls of blood vessels in the brain and retina, experiments that could lead to therapeutic control of the blood-brain barrier and of blood vessel growth in the eye.
News • Pathology
The future of pathology informatics
The Pathology Informatics Summit last October in Chicago showed that fast-moving trends are reshaping how clinical laboratories and pathology groups use information technology, in particular laboratory information systems (LIS), to deliver more value to physicians and patients.
