LabMind

Dr. Ila Singh, director of clinical laboratories at Texas Children’s Hospital, recently launched a collaboration with a broad set of clinical, IT and pathology stakeholders to improve the clarity of laboratory test names. She discusses why it is so challenging to create clear and helpful test names for physicians, given all of the informational goals and IT constraints. She also explains the importance of professional and geographic inclusivity for this project.

Ron Weiss, MD, MS, MBA, served as president and COO of ARUP Laboratories in the early 2000s. He was one of the principle authors of ARUP's Five Pillars statement of ethical principles. He pulls from his experiences growing up with a family business to explain how ARUP's early success required both business acumen and patient-centered values. Weiss also discusses why he's optimistic about the future of U.S. healthcare.

Ana Stankovic recently retired as senior VP of Worldwide Medical Affairs at BD, one of the best known in vitro diagnostic companies. Prior to her employment at BD, she worked as a basic science researcher, blood banker, reference lab clinical pathologist, and public health officer. In this interview, Dr. Stankovic describes what science looks like from the inside of the IVD industry, specifically how the selection process and character of projects differ from those of academic labs while scientific norms and patient-centered goals remain the same.

How do clinical laboratories report data to public health agencies, and what do those agencies do with the data? In this conversation Sam Marsden describes his experiences working in both the public health and clinical diagnostic arenas. He also dives into the critical role of public health agencies in gathering, analyzing, and applying data to improve the health of communities.

Few people understand clinical genetic testing—from biology to technology to ethics to regulatory issues—better than Dr. Elaine Lyon. Over her long academic and clinical career, she has made many important contributions to the development, use, and interpretation of genetic tests. In this conversation, Dr. Lyon discusses what makes genetic testing different from other areas of laboratory medicine, and what she sees as the greatest challenges in the regulatory, ethical, and clinical landscapes.