Media Coverage

Quest Diagnostics today announced it has acquired fertility diagnostics service firm ReproSource for an undisclosed amount. Based Woburn, Massachusetts, ReproSource provides services such as ovarian health and recurrent pregnancy loss assessments, as well as implantation failure and semen quality. According to the company's website, it purchased the assets of "the largest fertility-focused laboratory in the United States" in 2008, and since then it improved and expanded its core services while establishing partnerships with laboratory, academic, and industry players in the US and globally.

If voters decide in November to legalize marijuana for recreational use, pot-smoking job seekers and employees beware. Legalization will not protect job applicants or employees who test positive for marijuana use on pre-employment drug tests or random workplace drug testing. Yes, you can still get fired or not be hired for a positive test. Unlike alcohol, where Breathalyzer tests can show the exact level in a person’s blood, there are few available tests that show the level of impairment for marijuana. Saliva swabs and urine samples only show if THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, has been used over the last few days, said Dr. Barry Sample, of Quest Diagnostics, a New Jersey company that analyzes millions of workplace drug tests every year, not a person’s level of impairment at the time of a test. Tests of hair samples will show THC levels going back as long as 90 days.

There has been a trend a recent years for hospitals and health systems to sell their lab outreach businesses, often to one of the two largest commercial reference labs, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and then outsource their lab services to the same company. There is some early evidence that this trend may now be reversing.

There’s no argument that health care is changing: from service-based to value-based care, and from a supplier-centric to a patient-centric model. Both regulatory and patient pressures are pushing for better efficiency, better outcomes and simply better care. These pressures are moving the industry to be more open to the adoption of new technologies, tools and, in many cases, solutions that automate manual processes. These tools are powered by a specialized rocket fuel known as patient data. But in the rush to digitally capture and make the best use of patient data, two primary challenges have arisen. First, how do we break down the information silos that currently exist within our health care system? Secondly, while breaking the silos, how do we protect sensitive patient information as we share it across the health care ecosystem? There is also a large number of other tech-centric businesses and organizations that are currently utilizing blockchain to generate innovative solutions. Even large health care giants such as Humana and Quest Diagnostics have begun their own ventures into the world of blockchain.

As someone who has studied use and misuse of prescription opioids and other drugs for much of my career, I know drug misuse can happen to anyone. I have had friends, relatives and neighbors pulled into misuse, which includes substance-use disorders and other dangerous behaviors, such as drug combining. And I am not alone. A recently released statewide poll found that 1 of 3 adults in Texas knows someone who has been addicted to prescription painkillers. McClure is the director of medical affairs for Quest Diagnostics , the world’s leading provider of diagnostics information services, including in clinical drug monitoring.

Cleveland Clinic's 16th annual Medical Innovation Summit, scheduled for Oct. 22-24 in downtown Cleveland, will center around the theme of "Disruption: Reimagining Healthcare."[CR-LF][CR-LF]The summit — organized by Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the system's development and commercialization arm — is anticipated to gather more than 100 speakers, as well as leaders from more than 500 organizations and 20 countries, according to a news release. It will be held at the Huntington Convention Center. According to the release, other featured speakers include Nigel Clarke, vice president of technology and solutions development for Quest Diagnostics.

Two conflicting trends are hitting the United States: a continuing shortage of qualified or willing candidates for truck driving jobs, and the increasing state-level legalization of medical or recreational marijuana. The two trends certainly don’t mix. David Couch, the Little Rock attorney who wrote the medical marijuana amendment voters approved in 2016, doesn’t want marijuana users driving big rigs any more than the most anti-pot politician does.A recent study by Quest Diagnostics, the national drug testing lab service, reported that overall drug use in the tested workforce is down in Arkansas. The national rate held steady at 4.2 percent of the workforce, while the state rate dropped from 6 percent in 2016 to 5 percent in 2017. The study measured individual drugs as well.

As we first reported last May, Holmes founded the start-up Theranos and boasted her technology could take a pin-prick worth of blood from the finger and perform hundreds of laboratory tests. It was, she claimed, "the most important thing humanity has ever built." At its zenith, Theranos was worth nearly $10 billion and Elizabeth Holmes became the youngest, self-made, female billionaire in the world. Today, she and her company's one-time president stand criminally charged by the U.S. government of perpetrating a "multi-million dollar scheme" to defraud investors, doctors and patients. Elizabeth Holmes built her company Theranos on this invention she named the Edison. A miniaturized blood analyzer that would disrupt the $60 billion lab testing industry dominated by giants LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics.

Although more than half of Americans misuse prescription drugs, the percentage that did so has held steady for four consecutive years, according to a new analysis. Meanwhile, though, there has also been a surge in the use of illicit drugs and medicines obtained without a prescription among patients being treated for substance use disorders.

The countless drops of sweat covering their drenched bodies are indicative of the hard work put in by the New York Giants throughout the hot and humid summer. Those same droplets were also analyzed and examined to help individual performance. The Giants used a new sweat test this year to make sure their players were properly hydrated and prepared for the rigors of summer. It should continue to help them throughout the season. It’s not a completely new idea, just a refined version of a sweat test. There are other teams using different variations of this new patch the Giants had analyzed by Quest Diagnostics as part of their Blueprint for Athletes program. This iteration is easier to implement and is believed to be more effective than the previous processes they have tried over the past few years. The hope is that its benefits can stretch throughout the year and provide even the slightest of competitive advantages.