Originally Published IVD Technology January 2002
INDUSTRY NEWS
Laboratorians launch on-line testing guide
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Lab
Tests Online offers information about laboratory tests and important news
on testing.
(click to enlarge) |
A Web site that
is supported by the clinical laboratory community is providing healthcare consumers
with news and information about laboratory tests and other topics vital to the
management of their health. Launched in July 2001, Lab Tests Online (http://www.labtestsonline.org)
describes and explains to consumers such tests as PSA, HIV, Pap smear, and cholesterol,
among others.
"Consumers
now have a potentially lifesaving tool that helps them better understand their
healthcare, or the healthcare of family members," says Larry Kricka, DPhil,
immediate past president of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry
(AACC; Washington, DC). "Lab Tests Online provides reliable information
about the tests ordered by their doctors to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease."
Establishment of
the site will support and encourage the growing trend toward greater involvement
of individual patients in the management of their own healthcare. IVD manufacturers
may reap the benefits of the site by gaining an informed audience that is more
receptive to direct-to-consumer promotion of the advantages of health testing.
But the main beneficiaries, say the site’s supporters, will be the consumers
who use it to understand the results of their own tests.
"Consumers
who have been frustrated with the cryptic printouts of their lab test results
in the past will find Lab Tests Online an invaluable learning tool," says
David Sundwall, MD, president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association
(Washington, DC). "One simply selects a lab test from the site’s comprehensive
listing, and instantly receives uncomplicated explanations about the test, the
testing process, and the meaning of their lab results."
The peer-reviewed
site is collaboratively produced and monitored by an editorial review board.
It is sponsored by a number of diagnostics companies, including Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, IL), Bayer Diagnostics (Tarrytown, NY), Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, CA), Dade Behring (Deerfield, IL), Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics (Raritan, NJ), and Roche Diagnostics (Indianapolis).
Susan Wallace/Richard Park
Copyright ©2002 IVD Technology
