The importance of laboratory equipment cannot be stressed enough, as medical laboratories are more important today than ever before.
First of all, experiments take place in research labs, and without them medical advancements would not be possible. Moreover, clinical medical laboratories are often used for a variety of medical testing which is commonplace, but rather impractical to conduct inside an actual doctor’s office or clinic.
Generally, laboratory medicine is divided into three main sections, then further divided into a variety of units. The three sections are as follows:
- Anatomic Pathology
Academically, each unit is studied alone in one course, with subjects including physiology, anatomy, histology, pathology and pathophysiology.
- Clinical Microbiology
Clinical microbiology is the largest section in laboratory medicine, encompassing five different units: bacteriology, virology, parasitology, mycology and immunology.
- Clinical Biochemistry
Clinical biochemistry encompasses units such as instrumental analysis, enzymology, toxicology and endocrinology.
Other sections include hematology, which consists of two units – coagulation and blood bank -, and genetics, which might become the most important section in the future.
Clinical medical laboratories are typically attached to hospitals, either working exclusively with the hospital’s patients or acting as private operations that receive lab work from private doctors, lawyers, insurance companies and other health clinics.
The actual distribution of sections in a medical laboratory will depend in the lab type, the type of experimentation, as well as the major type of work the lab is involved in. Some medical facilities, for instance, have a lab exclusively for microbiology, while others might have various laboratories all dealing with clinical microbiology and different units within it.
Medical laboratories are the greatest consumers of medical supplies and expendables. They receive samples in special containers, and much of the medical analysis that occurs in laboratories is automated. Labs are usually busiest between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m., when blood work is being completed for doctors’ morning rounds at the hospital.
Clinical medical laboratories are a vital part of modern medical diagnosis and treatment, and more advanced diagnostic technology has further increased the need for minute measurements and analysis in order to achieve the proper diagnosis and administer the treatment.
Due to the success medical laboratories have proved in making work flow more efficient and accurate, several technologies for testing have been developed, and some procedures that could previously be done only in labs can now be done at home or in the clinic itself. Now, almost instant results for insulin, cholesterol, illegal substance related blood tests are available.
Even take at home cancer and HIV testing has become available on the consumer market, however this greater availability of some tests has not disrupted the importance of the medical laboratory. In fact, these tests seem to have made the labs even more important, as unclear tests need to be brought directly to the lab that created the at-home or in-clinic tests.
Genetic medicine is expected to grow tremendously in the future, and medical laboratories dealing with genetic testing will become even more important, while the basic operations of today’s labs will remain similar. The testing might be focused more on genetic code than pathogens and biochemistry, but the clinical medical laboratory will nonetheless continue to be an important part of medical diagnosis and treatment.