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Diagnostic technology
Diagnostic technology involves tests, assays and equipment that allow clinical labs to diagnose diseases. New diagnostic technologies are currently transforming both infectious disease testing and cancer testing. Rapid molecular tests, for example, make it possible for medical labs to deliver an accurate answer back to a referring physician in just hours—compared to the several days that are required for most long-standing microbiology test procedures.
Even more disruptive technologies include digital pathology and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Digital pathology is an image-based information environment that is enabled by computer technology to allow for the management of information generated from a digital slide. Digital pathology is enabled in part by virtual microscopy, which is the practice of converting glass slides into digital slides that can be viewed, managed, and analyzed on a computer monitor. With the advent of Whole-Slide Imaging, the field of digital pathology has exploded and is currently regarded as one of the most promising avenues of diagnostic medicine in order to achieve even better, faster and cheaper diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of cancer and other important diseases.
MALDI-TOF (matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight) mass spectrometry allows clinical laboratories to identify small aerobic gram-positive bacilli more accurately, faster, and in a more cost-effective manner than ever. It enables the analysis of biomolecules (biopolymers such as DNA, proteins, peptides and sugars) and large organic molecules (such as polymers, dendrimers and other macromolecules), which tend to be fragile and fragment when ionized by more conventional ionization methods.
Even as pathologists are working to develop more sensitive and accurate diagnostic tests for cancer, similar efforts are underway in radiology and imaging. In fact, one research team has developed a self-assembling nanoparticle that can adhere to cancer cells, thus making them visible in MRI scans and possibly eliminate the need for invasive tissue biopsies.
Researchers have developed a self-assembling nanoparticle that targets cancer cells and makes them visible on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The new nanoparticle improves MRI scanning efficacy by “specifically seeking out receptors that are found in cancerous cells,” according to researchers. Were this development to become a reality, it has the potential to alter anatomic pathology’s role in diagnosing cancer.
ARUP & Mayo Respond To New Market Cycle
CEO SUMMARY: Since the beginning of 2002, several important events changed the competitive status quo among the nation’s leading providers of hospital send-out testing. As part of its ongoing assessment of this market segment, THE DARK REPORT provides strategic management insights from …
Esoterix Ready to Launch National Marketing Blitz
CEO SUMMARY: It was 1995 when several specialty testing lab companies were acquired by a new company called Esoterix. Immediately the lab industry viewed Esoterix as a “put-together” lab company. However, since 2000, executives at Esoterix have invested $50 million to integrate operat…
Non-Pathologists Altering U.S. Laboratory Industry
CEO SUMMARY: It’s an interesting contradiction. On one hand, most pathologists enthusiastically recognize the value that diagnostic testing services provide to the healthcare community. On the other hand, too often it is non-laboratorians who provide the investment capital and entrepren…
Lab Testing to Boom During This Decade
CEO SUMMARY: Several recent acquisitions of lab test technology by billion-dollar diagnostics manufacturers reinforce a new reality in the healthcare marketplace: developing new diagnostic tests is faster, cheaper, and more profitable than developing new pharmaceutical products. This simp…
“August 5, 2002 Intelligence: Late Breaking Lab News”
Malpractice insurance has become a major concern in a growing number of states. Carriers are withdrawing from some markets and premium increases are significant. Pathologists in Florida tell THE DARK REPORT that they are awaiting quotes for next year, but that insurance brokers have told them to expe…
Big Fight is Brewing Over Lab Test Reimbursement
BY NOW, MOST LAB EXECUTIVES AND PATHOLOGISTS AGREE that Medicare Part B fees and reimbursement guidelines for lab testing have just about become de facto national standards. That’s because private payers increasingly use Medicare as the basis for building their own pricing and reimbursement guideli…
Ken Freeman Discusses Plans to Integrate AML and Unilab
CEO SUMMARY: Once again, Ken Freeman and Quest Diagnostics Incorporated is altering the national market for clinical laboratory testing. By acquiring American Medical Laboratories and Unilab, the nation’s largest lab company is expanding its presence in California, Nevada, and Washingto…
American Healthcare At a New Crossroads
IN SELECTING OUR “TOP TEN” BIGGEST STORIES of the lab industry for 2001, we’ve had some interesting discussions here at THE DARK REPORT about what’s happening in the American healthcare system and how it’s affecting laboratories and pathology group practices. I believe that our healthcare…
Roche, Digene, Centrex, Labtest.com, Specialty Labs, Tripath Imaging
ROCHE DIAGNOSTICS POSITIONED TO SERVE PUBLIC HEALTH LABS HEIGHTENED CONCERNS over bioterrorist attacks have accelerated plans within the public health lab sector to acquire state-of-the art diagnostic technology in DNA typing and enzyme immunoassay. Roche Diagnostics has in…
Market Changes Lead LabCorp To Follow New Strategic Direction
CEO SUMMARY: When formed in 1995, Laboratory Corporation of America faced a financially-hostile marketplace for lab testing services. However, strategic planning retreats in 1997 and 1999 were pivotal in redirecting this billion-dollar lab behemoth toward financial stability. During 2000,…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXII, No. 6 – April 21, 2025
Now that a federal judge has vacated the FDA’s LDT rule, The Dark Report analyzes the judgement and notes the various steps the FDA could take in response. Also, lab testing at pharmacies is proving to be less successful than was once anticipated.
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