Defining laboratory medicine, or squaring the circle?

In the August 2020 issue of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Giuseppe Lippi and Mario Plebani proposed a definition of laboratory medicine, which ends with this sentence: "The results of these measurements are translated into actionable information for improving the care and/or maintaining the wellness of both a single individual and an entire population". Nevertheless, the selfishness of individuals may, sometimes, jeopardize the interest of whole populations. The virtue of justice being within the reach of the entire human community more than of single individuals, the final sentence in the definition proposed by Giuseppe Lippi and Mario Plebani, should therefore, in our view, be rewritten, less selfishly, for example like this: "For a given investment, these measurements are preferably made when they bring as much beneficence, and non-maleficence, as possible to the whole population".

Value-based healthcare: the role of laboratory medicine.

The global increase of health demands pushes administrators and policy makers to provide good quality health care at sustainable costs. Many approaches have been developed, among which value-based health care (VBHC) is one of the most promising: value is given by outcomes achieved per dollar spent. Best value is given by shared benefits between all the stakeholders involved in the process: patients, providers, suppliers, payers and citizens. However, VBHC implementation is a current challenge for hospitals and healthcare providers, that may find it difficult to adapt their organization into a patient-centered clinical pathway based on both classical outcomes and innovative patient-evaluation. If any contribution to improve cost-effectiveness over the full cycle of care is welcome, laboratory medicine is achieving increasing importance, by generating useful knowledge to reduce costs and improve patient care, provided by a biunivocal relationship with clinicians. On the one hand, pathologists have to emphasize the importance of laboratory data to improve diagnostic and prognostic traditional thinking. On the other hand, the same data are useful only when supported by strong evidence. Introducing laboratory medicine professionals to VBHC would be useful to achieve better skills on data outline, comparable methodologies, quality control, cost assessment, multidisciplinary coordination and patient-specific procedures.

[Molecular pharmacogenetics in hospital laboratories in France: current data and future prospects]. / La pharmacogénétique moléculaire hospitalière en France: données actuelles et perspectives.

Molecular pharmacogenetic units have recently been established in several hospital laboratories in France. The clinical impact of these units is still limited and numerous problems of organizational, ethical, legal, technical, social and economical nature remain to be resolved. However, an increasing number of these units, a rise in their activities and an enlargement of their scope of application are foreseeable in the future. Ultimately, these units would significantly contribute to limit the public health problem caused by interindividual variabilities in drug effects. In view of these prospects, it seems essential that such hospital activity should be quickly recognised by the authorities and the various health sectors in France. It is also essential that the problems that arise from such pharmacogenetic activities should be considered by the authorities and would profit from the organization of a national network and from financial guarantees.

Ethics: a code for the laboratory.

The subject of ethics has become relevant once again since the 2004 expose of fraudulent laboratory practices involving HIV and hepatitis testing at the Maryland General Hospital. After congressional hearings into accrediting organizations entrusted to assure healthcare standards and patient safety, which had inspected Maryland General, vital changes were made--and laboratories are now subject to unannounced inspections. Here, we present a quondam cover story (June 1995) with a companion article (March 1998) that prove the subject of ethics never goes out of fashion.