ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – Despite a name change, the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine, formerly the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, is keeping its organizational priorities intact.
The change in name, which was approved by a two-thirds majority of the members who voted, reflects "what has long been happening in our profession and in our association," ADLM President Shannon Haymond said on the sidelines of the 2023 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo.
The organization's membership now encompasses much more than clinical chemistry, she noted, and "things are happening so fast in this industry that it's not really even clear what the next diagnostics will be." The new name gives the organization "flexibility to transition into the future" and is intended to be "forward-thinking," she said.
Although the name has changed, the organization's vision will remain the same, continuing to focus on staying abreast of new technologies that impact the laboratory medicine field and ensuring the needs of its members are met, Haymond said. Some of those needs were put into stark relief by the COVID-19 pandemic, which both shifted the way the public views diagnostics and laboratory medicine and emphasized many of the "pain points" laboratorians had long been facing, such as staffing shortages, Haymond said.
While automation has "long been a part of clinical laboratories," the pandemic brought home its importance in scaling throughput as the demand for laboratory testing skyrocketed, she said. "Even if you didn't think there was a lot of return on the value or the investment prior, we have to have these solutions to be able to meet the demands of today's clinical laboratories," Haymond noted.
Beyond just automating pre-analytic procedures, which has been a common trend within many laboratories, Haymond emphasized that there are benefits to be gained from new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that allow clinicians to interpret data in ways they couldn't before.
One benefit of the pandemic was the ability to access data and information, along with tools to harness that data, that can inform clinical decision-making. As large language models like ChatGPT become more widespread, Haymond noted the potential of utilizing those methods for creating reports or answering questions from clinicians or patients.
There are also potential uses for machine learning models that can augment certain specialized expertise, broadening access to tests and expertise to labs that may not have personnel on staff who specialize in certain technologies or diseases, she said.
But automation is not the only solution to the laboratory staffing shortage, and encouraging interest in laboratory medicine as a career, particularly for younger generations, is another priority, especially for regional sections of the organization, she said.
Ensuring that there are adequate places for people interested in laboratory medicine to get laboratory technologist training is essential, as is the outreach done by local member regions to encourage students to get involved in lab medicine and support their interest.
The organization is also maintaining its existing legislative priorities and remains opposed to the Verifying Accurate, Leading-edge IVCT Development, or VALID, Act, she said. The failure of the proposed VALID Act to pass through Congress at the end of last year's legislative session was a win for the organization and its partners, and ADLM supports other ways of updating the diagnostic testing regulatory framework, namely through CLIA modernization.
ADLM has representatives on working groups and subcommittees that deal with CLIA regulation and modernization, Haymond noted, adding CLIA has room for improvement, particularly as more new technologies come onto the market that "were not even fathomable 30 years ago." Current regulations may be well intentioned, but "some of them just don't fit anymore," she added.
Certain questions have become more relevant, such as whether a validated modification of a test kit approved by the US Food and Drug Administration counts as a high-complexity test, who exactly is qualified to be a CLIA laboratory director, how frequently inspections should occur, and how to address questions surrounding clinical utility, she said.
The organization is also continuing to support the Saving Access to Laboratory Services Act, or SALSA, which would modify laboratory testing price cuts set in place by the Protecting Access to Medicare Act and has been supported by a variety of laboratory organizations, including the American Clinical Laboratory Association.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a myriad of changes to the laboratory industry, but its impending end has also raised issues, Haymond added. There are laboratories that pivoted to COVID-19 testing during the pandemic that now have equipment sitting idle as testing demand has waned, and determining how best to leverage that existing equipment for new purposes is a consideration for ADLM, as well.
The pandemic also brought about a demand from patients for self-testing and self-collection of samples, and that trend has led the organization to consider the best ways to give patients "more autonomy to become engaged in their own healthcare and wellness while maintaining the role of clinical laboratory expertise to make sure that things are safe and effective," she said.
And many of those changes wrought by the pandemic are reflected in the organization's name change. While the organization considered just adding "laboratory medicine" to the AACC brand, Haymond said that the board liked the "bold statement that ADLM was going to make" and was "purposeful in including both diagnostics and laboratory medicine."
"Laboratory medicine is what we are today," but the "diagnostics of the future … may not be done in labs," she said.