Earlier this month, the House passed H.R. 493, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, by a vote of 414 to 1. The legislation aims to prevent insurance companies and employers from discriminating against employees based on their genetic information. The act is designed to offer protection and encouragement to those hoping to discover more about their health through genetic tests and personalized medicine.

Francis ...

My old boss used to say, "Any delay is too long." He was talking about programming iterate functions on a computer, but it's true for many things. We all hate to wait.

But what are we waiting for?

In a healthcare system, the speed of information is crucial to patient care. Patient identification, physician orders, and laboratory test data are moving at speeds unheard of a generation ago. Barcode ...

In recent years we have heard a lot about evidence-based medicine (EBM). Many physicians practice medicine out of habit; doing what is familiar or what they have been taught. Evidence-based medicine, however, is based on doing what the research shows is most efficacious; despite popular or conventional wisdom. In reality, EBM has been practiced in various ways, such as instituting care maps whereby for example ...

But with the pressures on healthcare, you may already be hearing plenty of talk about your organization's "culture." Even if you haven't, it exists and is important. In a way, it affects everything within your work environment.

A ...

Becoming a manager means changing your peer relationships. Instead of competing with another work silo, you now need their cooperation. It is essential to transition from the subordinate-supervisor relationship to this new peer setting to complete projects and achieve success.

A new manager can't do it alone. As this article from the Harvard ...

What kind of finance experience do you have? Are you a seasoned lab manager used to crunching number to craft a budget? A new supervisor putting in a request for a new instrument? Maybe a professor in a CLS program who teaches finance? We're looking for sources (or even authors) for articles about finance in the laboratory. If you can offer tips on budgeting, dealing with financial officers or finance basics, contact ...

We received the following e-mail from Swisslog:

Swisslog presents Free Webinar to Clinical Laboratory Professionals featuring Pneumatic Tube System Product Manager, John Kennedy

Swisslog Healthcare Solutions

"It's hard to understand," said Charles Natanson, MD, an NIH senior investigator who lead the ...

The FDA and the Institute for Safe Medication ...

A recent study published in the Lancet medical journal states AIDS patients in poor countries who are observed for clinical symptoms of the disease have close to the same survival rate as those who undergo lab testing. Read the whole story.

 As ...

CNN recently reported health officials from the CDC said this year's flu season is the worst in 3 years, and the vaccine was only 44 percent effective.

 Read ...

What's in a name? Does a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? In the very first regular column I wrote for ADVANCE in 1991 (September 30), I posed that question and proposed that our image as a profession is affected by the name we call ourselves.

The name "medical technology" as commonly used literally refers to the equipment, technique and state-of-the-art practice of medicine. It conjures ...

I sometimes wonder why an evening newscast devotes so much time to what the weather might do and so little to all the neat stuff happening under all that weather. Then it hits me like an extra of the Times. The news is a mile-wide, inch-deep phenomenon. Journalists can't know everything, especially if understanding isn't condensable into a ten-second sound bite. The common ground ...

As a student, one of my professors prided himself on being a CLS historian of sorts. He would regale us with tales of old tests, methods, instruments and innovative efforts to make do under trying circumstances. In our eyes, he was the McGiver of CLS! When we did our clinicals at the local hospital he showed us the tank out back where they used to keep frogs for doing pregnancy tests. He had an old Natelson blood ...

Here is an excerpt from a CLMA e-mail alert:

This is a huge victory for Medicare patients in San Diego, the three plaintiffs in the case, and the entire laboratory profession.

The original lawsuit was filed ...

I knew a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force who regularly walloped me at cribbage. His secret was a mean pegging game that he lost no time explaining to me--in excruciating detail--after each win. Laughing, he would say, "You can only gloat when you're ahead."

The good Colonel had a point--not to gloat, an ugly word connoted ...

This year National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week (NMLPW) will be observed April 20-26. The theme this year is National Medical Laboratory Professionals: Delivering Today's Results for a Healthier Tomorrow.

Sponsored by 10 laboratory organizations this year (it's remarkable that any organizations ...

Anyone enrolled in, accepted into, or who has completed an SBB program within the past 12 months in an AABB-accredited institution is eligible. The application includes an essay focusing on your vision of life as an SBB-certified professional.

Scholarship ...

As you may have read already, CLMA's Thinklab '08 conference, scheduled for later this month in Atlanta, was cancelled due to damage inflicted on the venue by the recent tornados that swept the downtown area.

Here is CLMA's statement:

CLMA has just been notified by officials at the Georgia World Congress Center that the site of our conference will not be available due to serious safety ...

The problem is that many organizations view a mission and vision ...

Previously, complications could be ...

We asked CLMA to update us on the status of ThinkLab '08, to be held March 29-April 1 in Atlanta, where a recent tornado did some damage to the Georgia World Congress Center. Here's what they said:

"CLMA is closely monitoring the situation in Atlanta as a result of the tornado that hit the downtown area on Friday, March 14. We are in communication with the Georgia World Congress Center and area ...

And that's not the only issue facing the nation's healthcare system, as ...

After returning from the tropical vacation of my dreams last week, I am back to the daily grind. With an article to write, our Grad issue deadlining and a looming Web update on my schedule, I barely had time to register my caffeine stock was running empty before I was back in the thick of things, and relaxing on the beach was a mere memory.

As I was proofreading an article with advice for new graduates, ...