Recent Articles

9 Tips for Eye Safety in the Clinical Laboratory

Recently I was reviewing safety in the clinical laboratory and during the review came across several excellent articles on eye safety.I would like to share with you some of the information I reviewed.

How Commercial Drones are Expanding Medical Care

Before discussing this topic I would like to share with you a great way you can help out the next generation of medical laboratory professionals. This back to school season, join COLA Inc. in donating to the GiveBack365 Scholarship program. This program has helped numerous students complete their...

4 Ways To Protect Patient Health Information

An excellent article recently appeared in G2 Compliance Advisor, published by Plain language Media, concerning policies needed to prevent laboratory employee Personal Health Information (PHI) breeches. The article makes the valid point that many PHI issues can be traced to an employee action....

The 71st AACC Scientific Meeting and Clinical Expo

The 2019 71st AACC Scientific Meeting and Clinical Expo has been a wonderful educational experience.Meeting topics have focused all areas of Laboratory Medicine from data analytics, to genomics, infectious diseases and a host of other broad areas.

What To Do Now That The CDC Alerted on Shortage TB Skin Test Antigen Materials

The CDC recently sent an alert of an anticipated nationwide shortage of Aplisol, one of the two purified-protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin antigens used in tuberculin skin tests (TST) in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.  The shortage could last for up to ten months. 

Is The Pool Making You Sick?

It is that time of year when families and friends visit public swimming pools and water parks for swimming and recreation. CDC warns … BEWARE! The number of gastrointestinal diarrhea outbreaks traced back to public water recreation facilities is increasing significantly each year with an annual...

Current Status of Rabies in the United States

A recent issue of MMRW addressed the current trends in human rabies exposure and deaths, specifically discussing exposure to bats as being a major factor in rabies transmission. Each year, rabies causes approximately 59,000 deaths throughout the world and, fortunately for the US, only 1 – 3 deaths...

Increase in Reports of Hepatitis A

Hepatitis A cases in the United States almost tripled from 2016-2018 when compared with 2013-2015.  According to the CDC, the increase was not uniform throughout the country. 

Prior to the introduction of Hepatitis A vaccine in 1995, it was common to see incidence rates of 30,000 cases/year. Now...

Commercial Drone Use Expands in Medical Care

Approximately 14 months ago, I published a piece “Drones Could Impact Laboratory Testing Sooner Than You Think”. In the fall of 2017, US Department of Transportation announced an Unmanned Aircraft System pilot program to explore expansion of drone usage in the private sector. WakeMed Health and...