I admit I am, without a doubt, addicted to my iPhone. Full-blown addiction. As in the cannot live without it, frustrated when I don't have 3G service, use it as my watch and alarm, to constantly check Facebook, consider it an extension of who I am as a person type of addiction. (It was a bit therapeutic to write those words). My addiction ...

Many of you lack computer skills. You can search on the Internet, send email, and other basic tasks, but you’re quickly lost when something appears on the screen that looks different or stops working at home or work. (All together: Grrrr...) So, just how important are computers in the laboratory, anyway? The United States Bureau of Labor ...

This afternoon, students and other ASM attendees were invited to a career options symposium, where three presenters offered information on three different microbiology career paths: technology transfer, clinical microbiology and microbiology in the military. Meryle J. Melnicoff, PhD, director of business development, The Wistar Institute, ...

Barbara A. Centeno, MD, senior member and director of cytopathology, Moffitt Cancer Cente; and professor, University of South Florida College of Medicine, kicked off the general session with a discussion of diagnostic cytology of the exocrine pancreatobiliary tract. Part of Dr. Centano's presentation focused on understanding the cytological ...

A few years ago I visited a hospital in eastern Tennessee and was fascinated by a pharmacy robot named Alexander. Alexander would take medications from the pharmacy up to the floors. Alex, holding its precious cargo in a secure ATM-like body, would, using infrared technology, take the elevator, select a floor, open the door and go deliver ...

Last week, the annual national joint meetings of ASCLS and AACC were held in Washington, DC. The meetings were very successful, drawing thousands of attendees nationally and internationally. The meeting offered cutting edge presentations, represented the gathering of top scientific experts and the opportunity to network and socialize. However, in ...

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 (Denver, CO), a provider of hospital material transport and pharmacy automation systems in more than 2,000 hospitals and pharmacies ...

The first statewide electronic health information system, HealthInfoNet, was recently unveiled in Maine as reported here. This is a logical application of technology, an accelerating trend of making healthcare information--including prescriptions--available to clinicians, but also letting patients know who sees their information and ...

As I was browsing some of the other ADVANCE blogs, I was struck by the commonality of themes between healthcare professions. It seems the different disciplines face many of the same issues (e.g., staffing problems, budget crunches, boosting productivity and morale), and many of the same fears (e.g., making an error that harms a patient, the ...

Remember when outsourcing did not apply to healthcare? Businesses developed the concept of contracting or otherwise arranging for some services to be performed outside the main business if it made financial sense. Outsourcing is utilizing experts from outside the entity to perform specific tasks the entity once performed itself, if those ...