LabMind

Curiosity, grit, and persistence over the course of many decades allowed Dr. Harry Hill to master many roles: pediatrician, immunodeficiency expert, laboratory director, NIH-funded researcher, business leader, and mountain climber. In this interview, he discusses the critical role of diagnostic test development in caring for patients with immunodeficiency syndromes. Dr. Hill also talks about the challenges and successes of blending an academic model within a commercial laboratory operation in co-founding ARUP, and then later developing the ARUP Institute for Clinical and Experimental Pathology.

The Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Movement gained traction in the mid-1990s, spurring a paradigm shift in how we view the relationship between science and clinical care. While EBM was percolating, clinical pathologist Rita Horvath was beginning her medical career at the University of Oxford—a hotbed for EBM thinking. Since then, she has become a thought leader in how EBM principles should apply to laboratory medicine and what that looks like.

In the 1990s, Dr. Mike Laposata created the world's first Diagnostic Management Team (DMT) at Massachusetts General Hospital, in order to better care for patients with coagulation disorders. In this interview, he discusses the distressing and all too common issue of diagnostic errors, and how a collaborative, team-based approach can make a vital difference. Laposata also addresses the systemic barriers to team-based diagnosis such as the lack of insurance reimbursement, and suggests ways to surmount these barriers and scale up DMTs.

Dr. Carl Wittwer, inventor LightCycler™, is a well-recognized name in clinical laboratory diagnostics. In this interview, he describes what drove him to push the limits of PCR beyond the biotechnology industry of its time. His own invention story reflects what Thomas Edison once said about this process: It’s 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Dr. Wittwer shares his vision of how environment, people, and organizational policies all contribute to fostering entrepreneurial innovation.

In this broad-ranging interview, long-time lab industry executive Khosrow Shotorbani asserts that laboratories should be actively engaged in population health management. He emphasizes that impacting health outcomes is what matters (e.g., shorter hospital stays, reduced emergency room visits, fewer complications) and not just the efficient delivery of test results. Shotorbani points out opportunities for the laboratory to impact cost savings from improving health outcomes which will far exceed savings achieved through efficient internal lab operations alone. He argues that by outsourcing lab operations, some health systems are squandering a huge opportunity. To promote these ideas, under the title of “Lab 2.0”, he’s teamed up with some of the most forward-thinking laboratory leaders in the nation’s largest health systems.

Mike Astion, a pathologist and professor of laboratory medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital, shares his experiences in launching and growing three different businesses over the course of his career and describes some of the unique challenges and opportunities he faced in his academic settings. He also explains the importance of hustle and negotiation for would-be entrepreneurs.