The Changing Face of Clinical Laboratories
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Mario Plebani
Abstract
Laboratory medicine has undergone a sea change, and medical laboratories must now adapt to, and meet new, customer-supplier needs springing from shifts in the patterns of disease prevalence, medical practice, and demographics. Managed care and other cost-containment processes have forced those involved in health care to cooperate to develop a full picture of patient care, and this has affected clinical laboratory objectives, the main focus now being on improvement in medical outcomes. More recently, the resource shortages in health care and results of cost/effectiveness analysis have demonstrated that the value of a laboratory test must be ascertained not only on the basis of its chemical or clinical performance characteristics, but also by its impact on patient management, the only true assessment of the quality of testing being quality of patient outcomes. The time is ripe for changing the vision of laboratory medicine, and some of the reasons for this are the availability of results in real-time, the introduction of more specific tests, and the trend to prevent diseases rather than cure them. The information from laboratory tests designed to evaluate biochemical or genetic risk and/or prognostic factors cannot be replaced either by physical examination and/or the assessment of symptoms. Today, the importance of laboratory scientists must be proven in three broad areas: a) guaranteeing the quality of tests, irrespective of where they are performed; b) improving the quality of the service; c) maximizing the impact of laboratory information on patient management.
Copyright © 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
Articles in the same Issue
- Development of Molecular Genetics
- The Changing Face of Clinical Laboratories
- Analysis of the Gly40Ser Polymorphism in the Glucagon Receptor Gene in a German Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus Population
- A Relationship between K-ras Gene Mutations and Some Clinical and Histologic Variables in Patients with Primary Colorectal Carcinoma
- Particle Counting Immunoassay for Urinary Cotinine. Comparison with Chromatography, Enzyme-linked Immunoassay and Fluorescence Polarization Immunoassay
- Identification of IgG-specific Oligoclonal Banding in Serum and Cerebrospinal Fluid by Isoelectric Focusing: Description of a Simplified Method for the Diagnosis of Neurological Disorders
- Low Bone Mineral Density after Total Gastrectomy in Males: a Preliminary Report Emphasizing the Possible Significance of Urinary Net Acid Excretion, Serum Gastrin and Phosphorus
- Six Methods for the Determination of C-Peptide Evaluated
- Automation of Urine Sediment Examination: a Comparison of the Sysmex UF-100 Automated Flow Cytometer with Routine Manual Diagnosis (Microscopy, Test Strips, and Bacterial Culture)
- Characterization of the Isoenzyme Profile of β-N-Acetylhexosaminidase in the Urine of Newborns
- Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics. Thomas Lothar, editor
- Structure-based Ligand Design. Klaus Gubernator and Hans-J. Böhm, editors (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry, vol. 6.)
Articles in the same Issue
- Development of Molecular Genetics
- The Changing Face of Clinical Laboratories
- Analysis of the Gly40Ser Polymorphism in the Glucagon Receptor Gene in a German Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus Population
- A Relationship between K-ras Gene Mutations and Some Clinical and Histologic Variables in Patients with Primary Colorectal Carcinoma
- Particle Counting Immunoassay for Urinary Cotinine. Comparison with Chromatography, Enzyme-linked Immunoassay and Fluorescence Polarization Immunoassay
- Identification of IgG-specific Oligoclonal Banding in Serum and Cerebrospinal Fluid by Isoelectric Focusing: Description of a Simplified Method for the Diagnosis of Neurological Disorders
- Low Bone Mineral Density after Total Gastrectomy in Males: a Preliminary Report Emphasizing the Possible Significance of Urinary Net Acid Excretion, Serum Gastrin and Phosphorus
- Six Methods for the Determination of C-Peptide Evaluated
- Automation of Urine Sediment Examination: a Comparison of the Sysmex UF-100 Automated Flow Cytometer with Routine Manual Diagnosis (Microscopy, Test Strips, and Bacterial Culture)
- Characterization of the Isoenzyme Profile of β-N-Acetylhexosaminidase in the Urine of Newborns
- Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics. Thomas Lothar, editor
- Structure-based Ligand Design. Klaus Gubernator and Hans-J. Böhm, editors (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry, vol. 6.)
