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Diagnostics World News | Vaccine resistance has joined antibiotic overuse on the list of issues threatening public health, researchers say, adding fears that the current pushback on vaccination against COVID will spread to other preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella.
Sep 22, 2021
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Diagnostics World News Infectious disease diagnosis has been shifting from culture-based methods and immunoassays to molecular diagnostic testing, and more of the work is happening at the point of care (POC) rather than a centralized lab.
Sep 20, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | When a disease outbreak occurs, the first stage of the response is detection. During the initial stages of Zika and COVID-19 outbreaks, The World Health Organization (WHO) identified effective diagnostic testing as one of the key factors in monitoring and managing the spread of the disease.
Sep 16, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Many of the biological assays currently done in clinical labs could be performed at the point of care (POC), thanks to microfluidic lab-on-chip devices for the rapid detection of pathogens, which might also be useful for pathogen identification, antibody susceptibility testing, or to measure host response based on cell count, proteins, or other biological entities.
Sep 15, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | A street medicine program is employing point-of-care testing (POCT) to mitigate the heightened risk of chronic diseases and death among the homeless in Los Angeles. Testing for glucose, hemoglobin, and hemoglobin A1c are currently available, but the menu will expand to include urine-based assays, she says.
Sep 13, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Over 18,000 different metabolites have been identified in humans that could potentially be altered by a respiratory virus infection, according to Benjamin Pinsky, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of the clinical virology laboratory at Stanford Health Care, speaking on advances in metabolomics at last week’s Next Generation Dx Summit. The changes can be detected by the coupling of liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry to produce host metabolic signatures.
Sep 9, 2021
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Diagnostic World News | A long list of diagnostic adages have held true during the COVID-19 pandemic: a proactive and organized scientific approach yields excellent results, serology is not useful for detecting respiratory viruses, not all nucleic acid amplification tests perform equivalently, different specimens yield different results, pooling will miss low-level positives, RT-PCR is more sensitive than antigen tests, pretest probability is directly related to post-test-probability, and errors occur when implementations are rushed.
Sep 8, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | The proper role of COVID-19 diagnostics, and especially rapid antigen tests, was the subject of a wide-ranging and mathematically oriented keynote presentation by Gerald Kost, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Point-of-Care Testing Center for Teaching and Research at the University of California, Davis, at the recent Next Generation Dx Summit. During his 30-minute talk, he took both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Cambodian government to task on their decision-making during the pandemic.
Sep 7, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | HealthTech SPAC funding, wearable fitness program for metabolic health disorders, multiple academic grants for dementia research and other causal connections in the brain, and more.
Sep 3, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Budget analysis suggests substantial savings for early kidney disease diagnosis, Harvard-Israel diagnostic partnership, AI for detecting cancer in the GI tract, and update EUAs for Thermo Fisher and Spectrum Solutions. Plus new products from Smart Meter, Dosis, Rhinomed, and more.
Sep 1, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | The M.O. of healthcare is to accommodate providers rather than individuals seeking care and that runs counter to the industry’s “triple aim” of improving the health of populations, enhancing the experience of care, and lowering per capita costs, according to Jay G. Wohlgemuth, M.D., chief medical officer for Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute. The pandemic has spotlighted some of these well-known failings but also provided some lessons on how to operate in a more consumer-centric way.
Aug 31, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | The pandemic ushered in a climate of uncertainty and high-stakes decision-making that has inspired a lot of ingenuity and innovation in clinical laboratories, according to Esther Babady, Ph.D., medical director of the clinical microbiology service at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center, speaking earlier this week at the Next Generation Dx Summit.
Aug 30, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Sexually transmitted infections are at an all-time high, affecting one in five Americans. We may be entering a critical era for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as antibiotic-resistant infections have developed the potential to affect virtually all humans, making antibiotic resistance “one of the world’s most urgent public health problems,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Aug 27, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | When implementing a point-of-care testing (POCT) program in an organization with thousands of users across multiple sites, it helps to have a multidisciplinary committee to provide needed oversight, match the scope of testing to clinical need, and keep the lines of communication open. The hospital IT department is an “often overlooked” friend in the process.
Aug 26, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Connected diagnostics and care automation could remove one trillion dollars in annual global healthcare spending, or roughly 10% of the outlay in 2022, according to Ken Mayer, founder and CEO of Safe Health Systems, who presented yesterday at the Next Generation Dx Summit. The enabler may well be a digital health and diagnostic platform the company operates in partnership with the Mayo Clinic.
Aug 25, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Thanks to photoacoustics, a blend of modern-day ultrasound machines and lasers, physicians in the next decade could be using a routine imaging test to “hear” the sound signal of a future heart attack. As envisioned, photoacoustic imaging would likely serve as a complement to intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) or standard ultrasound by reporting on the whereabouts and inflammatory status of atherosclerotic plaque.
Aug 24, 2021