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Transforming laboratory services

Transforming laboratory services

Roche Diagnostics has been awarded a seven-year contract by Barts Health NHS Trust to transform its laboratory services across London. The investment, which follows a competitive tender process, will see laboratories at St Bartholomew's Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, Whipps Cross University Hospital and Newham University Hospital upgraded to benefit from the latest in advanced automation.
  • News
  • / May 18, 2017
In EQA and POCT we trust

In EQA and POCT we trust

Diagnostic tests or associated pre-analytical steps are being performed increasing outside the confines of the medical laboratory on a point-of-care (POC) basis. Widespread though such POC testing (POCT) has become, the required governance, quality control and quality assessment is perhaps lagging behind technological application. It will be no surprise, therefore, that accreditation of these widespread services is high on the agenda, and those bodies providing external quality assessment services are sharpening the focus on this near-patient activity.
  • News
  • / May 17, 2017
Rainin pipettes aid research in Spain

Rainin pipettes aid research in Spain

Mettler Toledo’s Rainin pipettes and TerraRack pipette tip racks are helping PhD students in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Barcelona to study metabolic syndrome. Laia Oliva Lorenzo explained: “Our research involves the study of metabolic syndrome at the cellular, tissue and organism level, looking at the cellular metabolism – particularly adipocytes – of rats, and the effects of different diets and obesity. We analyse plasma and tissue samples, and carry out primary adipocyte culture and stromal cell tests.”
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
Pathology database of tissue images for deep learning

Pathology database of tissue images for deep learning

Royal Philips and LabPON, the first clinical laboratory to move to 100% histopathology digital diagnosis, plans to create a digital database of massive aggregated sets of annotated pathology images and big data, utilising Philips IntelliSite Pathology Solution. The database will provide pathologists with a wealth of clinical information for the development of image analytics algorithms for computational pathology and pathology education, while promoting research and discovery to develop new insights for disease assessment, including cancer.
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
Cardiac troponin point-of-care testing

Cardiac troponin point-of-care testing

Elkerliek Hospital in The Netherlands and Royal Philips have announced a collaboration to pioneer the use of point-of-care testing (POCT) in the hospital’s dedicated cardiac emergency department. As a key part of the collaboration, Philips’ CE-marked cardiac troponin I (cTnI) blood test for the rapid diagnosis of heart attack, which is based on the company’s Minicare I-20 handheld diagnostics platform, will be used to provide test results within 10 minutes using only a single fingerprick drop of blood.
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
smartLab: a vision of the future

smartLab: a vision of the future

To design the laboratory of the future you need pioneering and innovative thinkers and developers from research and industry. Scientists and businesses joined together for the smartLAB project to develop a vision of the laboratory of the future. The second edition of this fully functional model laboratory will be on display at LABVOLUTION with BIOTECHNICA, on 16–18 May.
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
Meeting HBA1c performance criteria

Meeting HBA1c performance criteria

EKF Diagnostics, a global in vitro diagnostics company, has announced that, in a recently published paper (Lenters-Westra E, English, E. Understanding the use of sigma metrics in hemoglobin A1c analysis. Clin Lab Med 2017; 37: 57–71.) its Quo-Test point-of-care (POC) haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) analyser has been confirmed as meeting International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) performance criteria. Using sigma-metrics data modelling, scientists from the European Reference Laboratory for Glycohemoglobin, demonstrated that Quo-Test easily met IFCC accepted quality targets of >2 sigma at 10% total allowable error (TAE) at 48 mmol/mol HbA1c. This is essential for the effective monitoring of glycaemic control in diabetes patients.
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
Collaboration to improve identification and measurement of monoclonal proteins

Collaboration to improve identification and measurement of monoclonal proteins

The Binding Site Group has entered a collaboration agreement with Mayo Clinic to develop a novel clinical laboratory test for the identification and accurate measurement of monoclonal proteins present in B-cell diseases. The two organisations want to improve the testing, diagnosis and monitoring of patients with multiple myeloma and related conditions.
  • News
  • / May 03, 2017
Uncertainty of measurement in the clinical laboratory service

Uncertainty of measurement in the clinical laboratory service

Measurement uncertainty in the context of clinical laboratories is inextricably linked to imprecision, and therefore the assessment of this poorly understood factor is an increasing element of the accreditation process. In view of the need to provide some clarity, Pathology in Practice is running a series of articles written by Stephen MacDonald.
  • News
  • / Apr 19, 2017
Refrigeration technology at the Francis Crick Institute

Refrigeration technology at the Francis Crick Institute

Last year the Francis Crick Institute moved into a brand new building in central London, bringing together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the largest biomedical research facility in Europe under a single roof. As the Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease, it is vital that it has very reliable and secure freezers to enable it to undertake its research effectively and safely.
  • News
  • / Apr 19, 2017
Hot Topics in Microbiology – Join the Grapevine

Hot Topics in Microbiology – Join the Grapevine

The British Society for Microbial Technology (BSMT) is offering an excellent programme for its annual scientific conference, to be held on Friday, 14 May 2017 in London. This year, the relevance of microbiology to the clinician and life-threatening clinical infections will be explored in Hot Topics in Microbiology – Join the Grapevine.
  • News
  • / Apr 11, 2017
Celebrating World Parkinson Day with ‘The Enlightened Mr Parkinson’

Celebrating World Parkinson Day with ‘The Enlightened Mr Parkinson’

World Parkinson’s Disease Day (11 April) is held every year on Parkinson’s birthday to raise awareness of the eponymous disease and the research being done to alleviate the condition. To mark 200 years since James Parkinson first identified the condition, a new biography of this forgotten man will be published.
  • News
  • / Apr 06, 2017
Supporting personalised treatment for pancreatic cancer

Supporting personalised treatment for pancreatic cancer

A range of clinical trials aimed at developing new treatments for pancreatic cancer will get underway after a £10 million investment from Cancer Research UK. The investment will support the PRECISION Panc project, which aims to develop personalised treatments for pancreatic cancer patients, improving the options and outcomes for a disease in which survival rates have remained stubbornly low.
  • News
  • / Apr 03, 2017
Bristol breakthrough in the manufacture of red blood cells

Bristol breakthrough in the manufacture of red blood cells

Researchers have generated the first immortalised cell lines that allow more-efficient manufacture of red blood cells. The results, published in Nature Communications (Trakarnsanga K, Griffiths RE, Wilson MC et al. An immortalized adult human erythroid line facilitates sustainable and scalable generation of functional red cells. Nat Commun 2017 Mar 14; 8: 14750. doi: 10.1038/ncomms14750) could, if successfully tested in clinical trials, lead to a safe source of transfusions for people with rare blood types, and in areas of the world where blood supplies are inadequate or unsafe.
  • News
  • / Mar 27, 2017
Director appointed for Health Data Research UK

Director appointed for Health Data Research UK

Professor Andrew Morris has been appointed director of the new UK health and biomedical informatics research institute, which is to be named Health Data Research UK (HDR UK). The new institute will, for the first time, incorporate on a national scale the entire breadth of data science research aimed at improving human health.
  • News
  • / Mar 24, 2017
Autoclave service manager celebrates 25th anniversary

Autoclave service manager celebrates 25th anniversary

Ranjit Rai is probably the longest serving and most widely travelled laboratory autoclave service engineer working out of Britain. He joined Priorclave within months of its formation, building autoclaves before becoming the company’s only service engineer providing customer support across the UK. Shortly after his appointment as service manager, Ranjit celebrated 25 years with the company.
  • News
  • / Mar 23, 2017
Research extends understanding of communication in toxoplasmosis

Research extends understanding of communication in toxoplasmosis

It lives inside one-third of the UK population and is a common infection in cats; however, scientists previously knew little about how the Toxoplasma parasite communicated with its host. Now, new research by the University of Glasgow’s Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology, in collaboration with The University of Vermont, has revealed how the parasite uses a key protein to form a communication network and ultimately continue the infection process.
  • News
  • / Mar 22, 2017
Reduction in blood gas time to result in ICU

Reduction in blood gas time to result in ICU

A recent time and motion study by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has demonstrated a 1.5 minute (>20%) reduction in time to blood gas results when using the Proxima bedside blood gas monitoring system from Sphere Medical. The results were presented at the British Association of Critical Care Nurses conference and Intensive Care Society State of the Art meeting as a scientific poster.
  • News
  • / Mar 17, 2017
Board game to improve team working in healthcare

Board game to improve team working in healthcare

An educational board game to help improve team performance in health and social care organisations has been developed by Focus Games in collaboration with NHS Lothian.
  • News
  • / Mar 16, 2017
Evaluating ELISA-based urine test for bladder cancer

Evaluating ELISA-based urine test for bladder cancer

Arquer Diagnostics, the developer of a high-sensitivity, high-specificity, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based urine test for bladder cancer, has recruited 801 patients for a clinical trial to evaluate the company’s MCM5 bladder cancer diagnostics test. The results from the study will be used as part of the company’s application for CE mark approval, ahead of the commercial launch of the MCM5 ELISA planned for later in the year.
  • News
  • / Mar 15, 2017

Upcoming Events

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