Laboratory

Article • Overcoming barriers

Scaling the barriers to precise diagnoses

Whilst digital pathology has the potential to deliver more precise diagnostics, there remain a number of barriers to its widespread implementation.

Article • Mini Microscopes

Mobile technology could enhance digital pathology

Mobile technology could prove an important catalyst in helping take digital pathology onto a new level in delivering clinical diagnostics.

Sponsored • Automated DIA

Use the digital image analysis in Breast Cancer

In a study of 436 breast cancer cases with 28 years of survival data histo-pathologists from Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden shows that protein tissue-based biomarker data are at least as good as gene expression assays.

Article • Digitisation

Pathology departs from a dark back room

A UK-based neuropathologist has highlighted how the digitisation of pathology will play a pivotal role in taking patient care on to a new and more efficient level. Speaking in a recent Webinar under the heading The Adoption and Benefits of Digital Pathology for Primary Diagnosis, Dr Daniel du Plessis also noted how the digital era would raise the profile of pathology and ‘bring it out of the…

Article • Standards

We expect to see some changes

Strictly speaking, digital pathology has not yet resulted in any groundbreaking changes for clinical diagnostics. The conventional light microscope introduced to pathology around 100 years ago continues to be the most important tool for pathologists.

Article • Change Management

The digital age in diagnostics dawns

Pathologists in Utrecht step away from the microscope as the first fully digital workflow goes live for primary diagnostics. ‘The whole world wants to stop by and see the show,’ said Paul van Diest MD, who leads the Department of Pathology at the Utrecht University Medical Centre.

Article • Microscopy

Digital pathology: a new diagnostic technology

Histopathologists play key roles in diagnosing disease entities and determining biomarkers related to the prognosis and response to specific therapy of malignant tumours. Report: Bela Molnar

Article • Microarrays

Taking biomarker research to a new level

Harnessing the potential of digital pathology is taking research into new and more efficient biomarkers to a new level. By combining strategic planning with the latest digital pathology technology, high quality tissue microarrays for biomarker research are being produced.

Article • Moving on

I saw the future of pathology – and it’s digital

Healthcare is going digital. No doubt about it, Prof. Hufnagl predicts. Information and communication technologies have gone beyond moving data from one place to the other; they are triggering stellar improvements in healthcare: diagnoses are becoming ever more precise, therapies ever more personalised. The extent to which the individual clinical disciplines have progressed in their technological…

News • Bacteria

Revolutionary antibiotics will save the world

An international team of including the Lomonosov Moscow State University researchers discovered which enzyme enables Escherichia coli bacterium (E. coli) to breathe.

News • Glucose level

Fiber optic biosensor-integrated microfluidic chip to detect glucose levels

Insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia are two well-known culprits behind diabetes, both of which are reflected in blood glucose concentrations. Now, researchers are working to create ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip devices to quickly measure glucose concentrations with the goal of developing device for early diagnosis and prevent of diabetes.

Interview • Tumour triggers

Can cancer be contagious?

No self-respecting TV crime series is without a pathologist – but the fictitious pathologist who incessantly solves crimes has little to do with reality.

Article • Evaluation

Calculated therapy is the objective

At a recent focus meeting held in Berlin by the Association of Accredited Laboratories in Medicine, Dr Andreas Weimann, managing director at the Laboratory Berlin – Charité Vivantes Services, spoke of the challenges that laboratories working with hospitals face due to the management of pathogens and the diagnosis of infections.

Article • Datasets

Benefits from The Cancer Genome Atlas

Last year, scientists at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) revealed that by measuring the proportion of both immune and cancerous cells in tumours, or ‘tumour purity,’ clinicians could more precisely predict the success of certain precision therapies. A key aspect of the discovery was access to over 10,000 samples constituting 21 different cancers.

Sponsored • Automated

Excellence in clinical chemistry testing

Patient care is the primary focus of clinical chemistry testing and Randox has developed the RX series of clinical chemistry analysers for high quality semi-automated and fully automated testing.

Article • Industry

The China Watch

Every time I go into a Starbucks in China I’m amazed by the long, slow line of coffee drinkers, mostly young and low to middle wage earners.

News • Calibration Verification

Randox Announces New Linearity Sets

Randox Quality Control are pleased to announce, as part of our ongoing growth and development, the launch of our new Acusera Calibration Verification range for Beckman and Roche Cobas instruments.

News • Osteoarthritis

Cells from cow knee joints used to grow new cartilage tissue

In an effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers at Umeå University in Sweden successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering. This is according to a…

News • EKF Diagnostics guide

Anemia and Hemoglobin testing

EKF Diagnostics, the global in vitro diagnostics company, announces the publication of its new guide, "Anemia and hemoglobin testing". Available to download for free, the in-depth hematology guide provides a review of the symptoms and causes of anemia, through to methods for testing hemoglobin and hematocrit, as well as factors that may influence these measurements.

Article • High costs

POCT could lose economic attraction

In addition to physical examinations, medical history laboratory test results are critical in almost all medical decisions made in the hospital. The demand for adequate, fast measurements has increased exponentially over at least the last 50 years and may have increased 100-fold, or more, since the 1950s. This could not have been achieved without the introduction of partial or full automation, of…

Gene variation promotes uncontrolled cell division

Mom’s eyes and dad’s tumor? Cancer is due to genetic defects, some of which can be hereditary. The gene variant rs351855, for example, occurs in one in two cancer patients. A team headed by Axel Ullrich from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried identified the gene variant a decade ago. Now, they succeeded for the first time in showing that the variation exposes an otherwise…

Article • Scanner

The world’s first digital clinical path lab

The field is so new that the annual Digital Pathology Congress (3-4 December in London) was held for only the second time. Yet, Philips Healthcare could announce a world-first – in partnership with the Netherlands-based LabPON, the company has created the first clinical pathology laboratory to be completely converted to digital diagnosis.

News • Biogel

Intelligent gel attacks cancer

A new injectable “biogel” is effective in delivering anti-cancer agents directly into cancerous tumours and killing them. This technology, developed by researchers at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM), has already been successfully tested in the laboratory. If it works in patients, the therapy could one day revolutionize treatment for many forms of cancer.

Article • Lab

Drawing blood from capillaries

It hasn’t happened yet, but the laboratory testing industry in the United States is bracing up for a day when venous blood draws may become more of the exception than the rule. Report: Cynthia E. Keen

Article • Networking

Improvements in efficiency and quality through digitalisation

Increasing requirements for specialisation and diagnostic quality in pathology on the one hand and the importance of pathology findings for treatment planning on the other hand call for new solutions in pathomorphological diagnostics. One important starting point is the fast-paced opportunity for digitalisation along with communication systems which facilitate the storage and transfer of large…