CLN Daily 2024
The utilization of data to improve patient care is becoming ever more common and important in all aspects of medicine, including in clinical laboratories. New technologies like machine learning and natural language processing are kicking off all kinds of applications and medical devices that could have a major impact on healthcare.
Given the importance of clinical laboratories when it comes to data, and that clinical laboratorians are working on the best way to use that data for improving workflow and patient care, data science is being given the spotlight this year at ADLM 2024. The inaugural ADLM Data Science Summit will be held on Thursday, August 1 from 1-5PM.
“We’re really focused on making it more about the community and what people are doing in data science in laboratory medicine,” said Robert Benirschke, clinical laboratory director at Northshore University Health System, who will moderate a panel on how startups can navigate the increasing regulatory environment around software-as-a-medical-device
The summit will feature two parts. The first part, which will make up about three quarters of the summit, will be 10-to-20-minute lightning talks from attendees, who will discuss their work. “The topics will really span laboratory medicine,” he said.
The second part, which will make up the other one quarter of the summit, will be two different panel discussions. One will be on data use and access within laboratory medicine. The other panel will be on the changing regulations around artificial intelligence and diagnostics.
“We all know laboratory developed test regulations are changing, but there’s been a lot of flux about when you’re an algorithm become a medical device,” Benirschke said. The panel will include representatives from companies who have been through this process to talk about their experience, and he also hopes to have regulators and someone from the Food and Drug Administration join them as well.
Benirschke said all clinical laboratorians should be talking about this due to all the data laboratorians produce that go into patients’ electronic medical records. Who better than the lab to figure out how to use that information, and what insights could be gleaned from it, especially if technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are applied appropriately to it? “We are the people who know our data best and have the collective skills to bring it all together,” he said.
Clinical laboratorians also know about practicality, and how something might make sense to implement in theory, but not in practice. “I am the first person to not want to put complex processes on top of things that are solved in a simple way,” he said. But clinical laboratorians also know where something like machine learning could help solve more complex problems, and where patient care would benefit overall from another layer added to patient data.
Benirschke is expecting that most of the people who come to the summit will have some kind of data science project they’re working on, “and I’m hoping we’ll get some cross pollination” of ideas, he said. He also hopes that participants will make connections that might not have happened otherwise. He was quick to add, though, that he hopes anyone with a kernel of interest in data science will come, even if they’re not actively working with it.
“I hope this is the beginning of something that carries on year after year, and that people are excited about and looking forward to at the annual meeting,” he said.
Register now for the Data Science Summit.
Jen A. Miller is a freelance journalist who lives in Audubon, New Jersey. +X: @byJenAMiller.