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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
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Diagnostics World News | For the benefit of laboratory and healthcare professionals, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) and Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) published joint guidelines in 2015 aimed at standardizing terminology and the classification of sequence variants uncovered through genetic testing. Understandably, in the several years since then, there have been tremendous advances in this field of molecular diagnostics such as next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies unlocking new opportunities to understand an individual’s unique genetic makeup. Armed with these insights, healthcare providers can personalize therapeutic options for their patients with genetic diseases, helping to manage or treat them altogether.
Aug 20, 2021
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Diagnostic World News | Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a urine-based molecular assay that can both reveal the presence of cancerous proteins and pinpoint a tumor’s location. The double-duty diagnostic nanosensor could one day be of clinical value in evaluating treatment response and long-term monitoring of tumor recurrence.
Aug 17, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February issued an AI and Machine Learning Software as a Medical Device Action Plan, outlining the way forward for manufacturers seeking the agency’s approval for their innovative medical devices incorporating AI.
Aug 12, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | As the coronavirus pandemic continues, new initiatives are emerging to help fend off future pandemics including the Pandemic Sciences Centre at the University of Oxford and the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a global network investigating how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife settings.
Aug 9, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | InterVenn closes a series C for liquid biopsy assay for immune checkpoint inhibitor response prediction, Strata advances personalized minimal residual disease (MRD) assays, Lumos Diagnostics in Australia goes public, and more.
Aug 5, 2021
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Diagnostics World | More COVID-19 tests prove accurate for the delta variant, NVIDIA’s Cambridge-1 supercomputer builds synthetic brain images, biobank and practice acquisitions, and FDA companion diagnostic approvals for Foundation Medicine.
Aug 3, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | As more people become vaccinated, researchers are continuing to evaluate the duration of immunity and variations in an immune response among previously infected and non-infected people, using neutralizing antibodies as their metric. This growing body of information presents critical data about COVID-19 immunity that determines when and how individuals should protect themselves from the virus. Understanding immunity levels offers global solutions for ending the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing future health crises.
Aug 2, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), circles of DNA outside the chromosomes but still within the nucleus of a cell, is believed to be an important but overlooked target in the treatment of amplification-driven tumors that have up to now been uniformly resistant to anti-cancer therapies. Boundless Bio is actively exploring the genes and cellular processes that underpin some crafty maneuvers of ecDNA using a precision medicine platform called Spyglass.
Jul 29, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | Researchers with Singapore-based longevity startup Gero have used wearable sensor data and artificial intelligence to develop digital biomarkers of longevity, stress, and resilience. The novel GeroSense biological age acceleration model is being positioned as a practical, high-quality alternative to blood tests or genomic profiling for large-scale population health studies.
Jul 27, 2021
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Diagnostics World News | The sources of health disparities are complex, and diagnostic testing is just one waystation on what is often an exhausting trek for many patients and their families. But today’s genetic tests may not be useful across ancestral groups.
Jul 26, 2021