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How Antidepressants Show Up on a Drug Test

If are taking a prescription antidepressant medication like Prozac (fluoxetine), you might worry that it could show up on a drug test. This is especially a concern if you must take a pre-employment drug screen for a new job. Because antidepressants are not considered “drugs of abuse,” they are not included in common urine drug […]

hematology

Hematology is the science or study of blood and blood disorders.in the medical field hematology contains the treatment of blood disease and malignancies, including types of hemophilia, blood clots, leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and sickle-cell anemia. Hematology is a branch of internal medicine that cope with the physiology, pathology, etiology, ,diagnosis treatment, prognosis and prevention of […]

Where is the consumer genetic testing industry headed?

Where is the consumer genetic

Where is the consumer genetic testing industry headed? Giving consumers clarity and choice Many companies offer direct-to-consumer genetic testing. These tests give people access to their genetic information without involving a healthcare provider or health insurance company. The results may encourage consumers to make better lifestyles choices. Direct-to-consumer genetic tests are marketed to customers via […]

Scientists Developing Early Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Sensor

Scientists Developing Early Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Sensor

Scientists Developing Early Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Sensor The team has completed the proof-of-concept stage and plan to move on to clinical trials   Researchers with the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Nanodevice Fabrication Group are developing a new biosensor that can be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases. An overview of their work has been […]

Helping Laboratories Interpret Clinical Genomics

QCI Interpret One provides labs with the best source of high-quality variant interpretation Q: HOW DOES QCI INTERPRET ONE SUPPORT SMALL AND RURAL HOSPITAL LABS’ APPROACH TO CANCER GENOMICS? A: Across the US, many oncologists send out their cases to reference labs when they would prefer to have them tested and treated in a community context. One of the challenges of interpreting tumor sequencing data in a local clinical setting is that small and rural hospitals need access to a lot of rapidly changing practice guidelines for genomic medicine. With QCI Interpret One, we have a curation workforce that reviews the new clinical literature and curates that information to provide community labs with an up-to-date view of actionable genetic variants, trials available in their area, and which drugs are recommend for a specific cancer diagnosis. This information enables them to produce a professional clinical report on par with what large reference labs produce, enabling small regional labs to offer clinical genetic testing and get reimbursed for it, fostering closer engagement with their local community of oncologists. Q: WHAT MAKES QCI INTERPRET ONE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER CLINICAL DECISION SUPPORT SOFTWARE? A: There are more than a thousand different cancer types with a wide variety of subtypes that are sequenced that have clinically actionable drug or trial options. Figuring out which variants are present in each patient usually occurs upstream of the clinical decision support software, but once you identify variants and genes, the clinical decision support software is needed to interpret which of those are clinically actionable or significant in a particular cancer type. QCI Interpret One goes a step beyond what many clinical decisions support software provide, in that it helps dynamically assess the current clinical significance of each of those variants in a specific cancer type. It does this by computing a classification or actionability for each variant that's detected in the tumor, so for each variant that may be clinically actionable, QCI both applies the American Molecular Pathology guidelines and the updated content from the Qiagen curation team, to determine whether a variant is clinically actionable. Q: HOW ARE ONCOLOGISTS INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS OF VALIDATING THE CLINICAL EVIDENCE IN THE INTERPRETATION SUMMARIES? A: Qiagen has a group of oncologists with different expertise that help review content that our clinical scientists curated to develop “interpretive comments” that support the clinical significance of a variant. Those comments go through our oncologist review board to ensure quality and relevance in terms of what oncologists need. We provide these variant-specific, well-tailored comments to help labs without the staff to write up these interpretive comments get a good draft interpretive comment that they can review and use on the report or edit as they see fit. Q: WHAT KIND OF INPUT DATA IS REQUIRED FOR QCI INTERPRET ONE TO PROCESS AND INTERPRET DIFFERENT TYPES OF VARIANTS? A: The QCI Interpret One system can take in the variant call file format, which is the standard used for representing the genetic variants that are detected from NGS. But for other technologies like PCR assays that detect specific fusions or copy number variations, those can also be input through a separate metadata file. Q: HOW CAN QCI INTERPRET ONE HELP PATIENTS FIND CLINICAL TRIALS? A: Clinicians can provide the patient’s ZIP code to customize the selection of clinical trials to include ones that are currently open and recruiting nearby. The results can also be filtered based on the patient’s particular genetic profile and whether they meet a trial’s eligibility criteria. For example, many new precisions medicine trials require patients to have certain cancer mutations or lack certain drug resistance mutations. And those types of considerations are all automatically verified by QCI Interpret One.

Helping Laboratories Interpret Clinical Genomics   QCI Interpret One provides labs with the best source of high-quality variant interpretation Q: HOW DOES QCI INTERPRET ONE SUPPORT SMALL AND RURAL HOSPITAL LABS’ APPROACH TO CANCER GENOMICS?   A: Across the US, many oncologists send out their cases to reference labs when they would prefer to have them […]

Cancer detection technologies on microfluidic chips

When you hear the word cancer, it conjures up sad feelings. Most patients think that if they have it, they have less chance to survive and it’s the start of a countdown to death. Most people only know of the most common treatments such as – chemotherapy, which uses drugs to kill cancer cells, radiation […]

Blood Collection Tubes

Blood Collection Tubes

Blood Collection Tubes as Sources of Preanalytical Error   Every lab technician hopes to avoid errors that require retesting, increase costs, or prolong the time it takes to get results to patients. When issues do occur, it can be difficult to troubleshoot and correct the problem. As technology advances and assays become more complex, clinical […]

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence Building trust, confidence and responsible growth   Artificial intelligence (AI) addresses complex problems to enable better decisions, products and services. It represents a significant growth opportunity for digital innovators and other industries. At the same time, it also raises difficult ethical, privacy and security considerations. Best practice and standards have an essential role […]

Genetic

Genetic   Genetics is the scientific study of genes and heredity—of how certain traits are passed from parents to offspring as a result of alteration in DNA sequence. A gene is a segment of DNA that includes instructions for building one or more molecules that help the body work. Genetics research studies how every single […]