Clinical laboratories play a vital role in the healthcare ecosystem, providing crucial information exchange to aid doctors in making accurate diagnoses and improving patient outcomes.
This research report on the Central Laboratory Services market provides an in-depth examination of this industry, encompassing key trends, prevalent diseases, COVID-19’s effect on sales, as well as various contributors to market growth.
1. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Clinical laboratories play an essential role in modern healthcare. Their services help physicians diagnose patients and guide care decisions; yet their value often goes underrated by both physicians and the general public.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, laboratories had to prioritise patient care while meeting high testing demand. Lab equipment and reagents necessary for testing for the virus were in short supply, leaving labs with an overwhelming backlog of diagnostic tests to perform. As COVID-19 transitions into its endemic stage, labs must work through this backlog while simultaneously adhering to established guidelines.
These obstacles to laboratory operations will likely linger well into 2023 and beyond, necessitating further cooperation among labs in advocating for more reasonable coverage and reimbursement rates for diagnostic testing, while investing in equipment needed to detect new variants of viruses.
As healthcare increasingly moves toward value-based models, clinical laboratories will need to reframe their roles from sole provider of test results towards offering comprehensive, actionable insights that improve patient outcomes while decreasing costs.
As the demand for specialized staffing rises, clinical laboratories are turning increasingly to external partners for assistance with staffing needs. Such partnerships allow hospitals to offload testing from their internal labs while simultaneously lowering costs and increasing reimbursement rates. Pharmacy-based and at-home testing may further disrupt clinical laboratory landscape as testing shifts away from traditional hospital or physician office venues – propelling market expansion at an increasing rate.
2. Personalized Medicine
Physicians need accurate and up-to-date health information in order to provide their patients with optimal care, which clinical laboratories play a vital part in providing. New tests and methodologies have allowed an expansion in availability of medical lab services.
As the medical community shifts away from volume-based models of care towards one that emphasizes value, clinical laboratories must move away from being solely providers of test results to becoming providers of insights that improve overall patient outcomes and reduce costs. This requires shifting both perceptions among medical professionals as well as patients of what a laboratory is and can do.
Pharmacogenetic testing provides physicians with a means of identifying genetic variants that impact how drugs are metabolized in the body and, thus, can alter how patients respond to medications. With FDA guidelines regularly revised upwards, more and more doctors are including this screening in their treatment plans.
Implementing personalized medicine does not come without its challenges. One such challenge lies in identifying which interventions work for which patients. While rigorous, well-designed and validated randomized clinical trials would be ideal in doing this task, due to human biology’s complex nature it may not work equally as well for all individuals; as a result other strategies for testing personalized medicines, such as N-of-1 trials, intervention-matching trials or adaptive clinical trials have emerged as alternatives for testing personalized medicines.
3. Telemedicine
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred significant transformations in clinical laboratory operations, including the surge of telemedicine services. Telemedicine allows patients to receive healthcare remotely while also increasing accessibility and improving patient experiences; but, to maximize its benefits effectively, laboratories must invest in infrastructure and training necessary for effective implementation and delivery of these services.
Though many telemedicine evaluations have been undertaken, most lack a framework that would enable them to be evaluated against quality, access, and cost performance goals. To address this deficiency, the National Library of Medicine convened a multidisciplinary expert committee which developed a framework and related evaluative criteria for clinical telemedicine applications.
This framework defines three common aspects of telemedicine, namely (a) information or telecommunications technologies; (b) geographic distance between participants; and (c) health or medical uses. Telemedicine was defined by its committee as using electronic information and communications technology to deliver health care when distance separates the participants.
As such, many contemporary telemedicine applications fit within this definition, though it can sometimes be difficult to discern between clinical and nonclinical uses of telemedicine. For example, primary care physicians who attend consultations with specialists via telemedicine could gain enough knowledge from them that would enable them to manage similar cases independently without consulting specialists again afterwards.
Patients have reported numerous advantages from telemedicine, including easier history-taking and more time to listen to physicians’ advice, improved diagnosis accuracy with less diagnostic errors, fewer missed appointments, streamlined appointment scheduling, reduced hospital readmissions/admissions and increased capacity for care. But for telemedicine to truly flourish it must remain accessible to underserved populations while offering personalized healthcare experiences tailored specifically to the unique circumstances and expectations of each individual patient. For this endeavor to succeed it must also foster communication and collaboration across providers.
4. Direct-to-Consumer Testing
Genetic testing provides valuable insight into an individual’s risk for various diseases or traits such as eye color or height. It works by looking at how distinct molecules, called “bases,” that make up genes are organized – often linked with risks of diseases or conditions; some tests offer screening or diagnosis capabilities while others simply provide a snapshot of a person’s DNA variants.
Conventional genetic testing is generally ordered and performed by health care providers; however, companies offering direct-to-consumer testing allow consumers to collect a saliva sample themselves and submit it for testing without going through a health care provider first. Such tests are often advertised on television, the internet, or print and touted as ways of giving control back to individuals; however critics worry they could have adverse impacts on medical decision making, while procedures for informed consent remain vague.
Some direct-to-consumer tests come equipped with substantial clinical and scientific data backing their claims; however, not all do. There is still widespread disagreement within the medical community as to which genetic variants contribute most heavily to disease; additionally, new information emerges frequently.
Direct-to-consumer tests are regulated as in vitro diagnostics by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The agency has taken active steps in streamlining regulatory pathways for these tests while working closely with test companies to ensure they provide products with clinical validity, descriptive accuracy, and easy consumer understanding. Furthermore, mechanisms have been put in place to address potential issues with existing DTCT products on the market.
5. Interprofessional Communication
Multidisciplinary teams rely on effective communication amongst their members to collaborate and work effectively together, which requires creating a communication style that suits individual professional perspectives. A recent study demonstrated how quality interprofessional team communication correlates with patient satisfaction with care; yet little research has been conducted into how healthcare professionals and patients assess this aspect of interprofessional team communication.
Lake and colleagues suggest using structured self-reflection to increase team members’ awareness of their own and others’ communication styles; journaling or checklists could also help monitor interprofessional communication efforts’ success.
The global clinical laboratory market is propelled by an increasing demand for medical diagnostics, due to factors like an increasing incidence of certain illnesses, increased accessibility of workplace testing services and insurance-based exams, as well as growing patient awareness regarding various conditions and treatments.
Even with the substantial growth of the clinical laboratory market, laboratory professionals still face multiple obstacles. These include regulatory issues that arise with each passing day and the need for developing new diagnostic tests while strengthening quality management systems in laboratories.
To overcome its difficulties, Global Central Laboratory Service industry leaders have undertaken strenuous efforts to enhance communication between staff and patients. Furthermore, they are working on new tools which will allow them to provide actionable clinical insights for healthcare providers – moving away from a cost-based model towards value-based care, where labs offer information that helps inform treatment decisions while simultaneously cutting costs.
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