Dr. Valdes and Dr. Linder had an interesting article in Advance, an online magazine for clinical laboratory administrators. The crux of the article is that clinical labs are playing a larger role in medical treatment, and as personalized medicine (PM) grows, that role will only increase.

The development of PM makes clinical laboratories the central providers of patient-specific, actionable information that will guide physicians and other healthcare providers…The truth is that the practice of medicine has always been “personal” in that physicians treat individuals based on signs, symptoms and other diagnostic information obtained for that individual. What has revolutionized the concept of PM is the rapid process of taking medical discoveries from bench to bedside at a rate not previously experienced. All indications are that the services provided by clinical laboratories are central to the rapid evolution of that process.

Read the whole article here.