Seven solutions: How the most innovative hematology labs are tackling their top threats.
Hematology laboratories around the world face similar operational and organizational challenges. A shrinking workforce, increasing testing volumes and case complexity, and manual processes are among the virtually universal barriers to efficiency and quality service.
Nearly a quarter of all hematology labs analyze more than 100 peripheral blood smears (PBS) every day, yet the vast majority are still performed manually using an optical microscope. That disturbing statistic is just one creating a growing crisis in the hematology lab. In the age of widespread digitization in healthcare and across industries, hematology laboratory procedures are falling behind. And it's that misalignment that planted the seeds of Scopio Labs.
Something like 70% of today’s medical decisions depends on laboratory test results, and clinical laboratories therefore play an absolutely essential role in today’s healthcare system. Yet the most common hematology lab tests like the peripheral blood smear review are still mainly conducted manually with a microscope. They require classifying and counting cells by type and hunting for abnormalities. Does it work? Sure. Is it the best we can do? Not by a long shot. This method is labor intensive, time-consuming, requires continuous staff training, and is subject to relatively large inter-observer variability
Counting and classifying blood cells is one of the oldest laboratory methods available for the evaluation of a patients’ health. Revealing both quantitative and qualitative data, the complete blood count (CBC) and complete blood count with differential (CBC w/diff) tests are the most commonly performed tests in the clinical hematology laboratory to this day.
