The 500-bed Warrington Hospital in the north-west of England has introduced rapid, accurate POCT to its wards. The hospital was one of the first in the UK to install Siemens RAPIDLab 1200 Blood Gas Analyzers and the RAPIDComm v3.0 Data Management System. More recently, it has installed Clinitek Status Connect systems to further enhance its operations.
Artel is launching the new MVS Multichannel Verification System, an objective performance assessment and optimization tool for automated liquid handlers. The MVS offers accuracy and precision information for any liquid handling device with up to 384-channels, allowing for confidence in assay data.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has one of the largest immunohistochemistry / in situ hybridization (IHC / ISH) workloads in the United Kingdom, performing almost 120,000 IHC slides a year.
‘We are all aware of the importance of early diagnosis and rapid appropriate treatment of patients with severe sepsis. Yet, many patients still do not receive satisfactory early management and the application of recent guidelines for sepsis management is still inadequate,’ writes Jean-Louis Vincent MD PhD, from the Intensive Care Department, Erasme Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles,…
Point of care technologies (POCT) have an important, quality enhancing, risk-reducing and cost-impacting role within the extremely time-critical medical decision structures of a central Accident and Emergency department, says Professor Wilfried von Eiff, Centre for Hospital Management, University of Muenster, Germany.
The health of the laboratory/ clinician relationship has always served as a good indicator of the overall quality of a given healthcare network. Historically, labs focused ‘heads down’ on delivering excellent test results, but today appear to be expanding their horizons to partner with clinicians for better patient care.
Debuting at the AACC meeting was the first free mobile application to help consumers decipher their own medical tests. Created for use on an iPhone, iPad and Android smartphone, the Lab Tests Online app connects to a site promising to provide reliable, unbiased information that enables them to have more informed conversations with their doctors.
Acute myocardial Infarction (AMI) is a major cause of death and disability. Worldwide, one in eight patients die of an ischemic heart disease. Its rapid and accurate diagnosis is critical for the initiation of effective evidence based medical management, including early revascularization, but is still an unmet clinical need. The gradual implementation of high-sensitive cardiac troponins (hs-cTnT)…
A drop of blood can unlock secrets of the heart. By analysing the biological elements present in a blood, a physician can better understand the extent of damage or disease for patients with heart failure and more confidently prescribe a course of treatment.
Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics announced today that its ADVIA Centaur® Syphilis Assay1 for the detection of antibodies against Treponema pallidum, a bacterium known to cause the sexually-transmitted disease, syphilis, has been CE-marked. Now, laboratories outside the United States can equip themselves with a new testing tool for this serious condition and drive additional workflow and efficiency…
Researchers from London's Kingston University have developed a new highly-accurate blood test which can detect how much a patient's diet could be responsible for a lack of the so-called "sunshine vitamin". Vitamin D deficiencies can weaken the immune system and increase the risk of cancer and osteoporosis.
During the IFCC and EuroMedLab congress in Berlin, Beckmann Coulter launched into Europe its AU 5800, which, the firm reports, improves processing time compared to current systems and therefore meets the demands of ever faster workflow in clinical laboratories.
Roche Diagnostics showcased its full spectrum of cobas laboratory solutions at EuroMedLab this year. Visitors were given live demonstrations and shown videos of leading products for both small and large laboratories – including workflow automation, analytics and customised IT.
Established in 1987, Unilabs now has operations in 12 countries, employs more than 3,700 people, with 220 medical doctors, and presents the most comprehensive portfolio of diagnostic services, geographically covering a most extensive area of Europe.
‘Heal the world’ sang the Berliner Rundfunk Children’s Choir and Youth Orchestra, and thus aptly began the joint 21st International Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine and the 19th IFCC-EFCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, attracting 4,418 delegates, 2,833 visitors and 1,058 exhibiting staff to Berlin in May.
Adaptability and scalability were the buzz words at the Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics booth at this year’s IFCC-Worldlab and EuroMedLab congress. With the ongoing generation of their highperformance automation systems as an example, the company offers a multi-discipline architecture that enables a lab team to build an automation solution following their individual demands.
Bacteria are highly flexible when it comes to choosing a vehicle to enter a human body. During orthopaedic surgery, they may well settle on a prosthetic joint and cause immediate or delayed infections.
While researching bovine mastitis (an S. aureus infection that occurs in the cows’ udders), researchers led by Dr Mark Holmes at the University of Cambridge, UK, identified a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which occurs both in human and dairy cow populations.
In late May, a particularly aggressive and new strain of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) posed an enormous challenge for northern German hospitals. In Hamburg, the focus of the epidemic, more than 1,000 people fell ill, about 180 of them seriously, after getting into contact with the bacterium. Report: Meike Lerner
Facing the fundamental changes that laboratory medicine is undergoing, in early June Roche Diagnostics Deutschland GmbH invited 50 high-profile speakers to a six-day symposium to discuss current research, economic and diagnostic issues in lab medicine with a professional audience. Report: Karoline Laarmann
The UK -- Patients admitted to hospital with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) face a six-fold greater risk of death if they become infected with Clostridium difficile, according to a new study carried out by researchers at Imperial College London and St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust (pub: Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics).
Although powerful, new, targeted treatments are regularly introduced to cancer clinics, choices for the first-line treatment of invasive breast cancer normally lie between preventive surgery and chemotherapy. A recent American study used genomic prediction combining multiple signatures to determine outcomes to standard chemotherapy.
This May, IFCC WorldLab Berlin with its manifold scientific programme gives clinical lab physicians the opportunity to see over the rim of the tea cup of their working field. Within the congress theme ‘Healing the world’ comes an exciting lecture on laboratory work in third world countries and disaster areas.
‘Three years is a long time in the world of research. The amount of information on offer quickly grows quite enormously,’ says Professor Rudolf Tauber, joint head of this year’s WorldLab congress with Professor Harald Renz. Thus, one organisational challenge was to channel current trends and developments and present participants with an informative, comprehensive overview. How was this…
2011 The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) has published the program for its 2011 Annual Meeting being held July 23 – 28 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. This year the Annual Meeting features almost 300 individual educational events in a variety of formats. Hot topics for 2011 include cancer, obesity, diabetes, and healthcare reform.