Dear LabPulse reader,
As the new year geared up, this week's top news came from several different areas in the field of diagnostics. One of our most-read stories was Labcorp and UHS' agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay nearly $389,000 to settle allegations of False Claims Act violations through allegedly delaying the submission of orders for tests to improperly bill Medicare.
Another story which caught readers' attention involved emerging technology: A research team at the University of California, Riverside has announced the development of a nanopore-based sensor that may help diagnose illness by capturing signals from individual molecules. The technology has the potential to be incorporated into portable diagnostics, the researchers said.
Myriad Genetics and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced their collaboration on retrospective and prospective studies evaluating the clinical validity and utility of Myriad's whole-genome sequencing-based molecular residual disease test, Precise MRD. In another collaboration that garnered attention, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in conjunction with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, developed and made available a nonhazardous synthetic genetic material designed to validate diagnostic tests for the H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu.
Wrapping up our most-read stories of the week, University of Iowa researchers shared their findings and recommendations from a study concerning heparin-induced thrombocytopenia screening and confirmatory serotonin release assays, sharing best practices for eliminating unnecessary manual work.
Thanks for reading.
