At the recent Lab InfoTech Summit, I presented a lecture (see: Pathology Informatics as a Key Element in New Healthcare Delivery Models and Technologies) in which I listed eight new healthcare delivery models and technologies with a discussion of some of the real and anticipated effects on pathology and the clinical labs. Since this time, I have expanded this list to an even dozen. All of them have been discussed in one form or another in Lab Soft News. I offer this expanded list below. My intention is to return to many of these items for discussion in future notes.
- Direct access testing (DAT): consumer-managed lab testing.
- Personal health records (PHRs); use of patient portals to replicate physician office data to them.
- Cloud computing; healthcare computing moves to the web.
- Merger of lab/pathology/radiology into the new specialty of diagnostic medicine.
- Multiplex biomarkers and algorithms for screening and diagnosis; pursuit of the early health model.
- Expansion of home lab testing with improved kits and portable testing devices.
- Walk-in clinics located in retail pharmacies and big-box stores; introduction of more complex lab testing options in these sites.
- Wider adoption of the Health 2.0 & Medicine 2.0 philosophy; pursuit of web-enabled quality healthcare.
- Expansion of medical tourism; U.S. healthcare system faces greater competition.
- Information technology becomes a key competitive factor for national reference labs and hospital lab outreach programs; evolution of lab networks.
- Evolution of digital pathology departments; development of searchable pathology image databases.
- Healthcare reform with greater emphasis on the value of services; recognition of lab testing as a cost-effective component of healthcare.
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