Understanding data and how to use it has become a pressing need for all laboratory professionals, from bench scientists to directors.
“Data literacy is the superpower of the 21st century,” said Dustin R. Bunch PhD, DABCC, assistant director of clinical chemistry and director of laboratory informatics and data analytics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Bunch will lead a July 28
roundtable session at ADLM 2026, titled “Data literacy in the clinical lab: What do I need to know?”
Bunch hopes this session will allay some of the confusion and frustration he has observed among lab workers while giving talks on the importance of data in the laboratory. “One of the things that keeps coming up is how to interpret the data,’” he said.
In the upcoming roundtable, Bunch will showcase a comprehensive data-literacy framework spanning individual, departmental, organizational, and community levels. He will outline the five stages lab professionals must progress through to achieve full data literacy: data unaware, data aware, capable, proficient, and driven. Bunch will also discuss practical strategies for advancing through these stages, sharing real-life challenges and success stories along the way.
Using this framework will help clinical laboratorians understand where they are regarding their data literacy and where they need to be. “Not everyone needs to be a guru,” Bunch said. For most people, being able to use data to do their jobs, glean insights, and have discussions with other professionals will be enough for them to excel.
Bunch also wants to help workers who might feel left behind, such as bench scientists who were not trained on new technologies as they emerged. “We have maybe done them a disservice in the past,” he said. “Sometimes we train them to do one specific thing, and they don’t know how to transfer that into other areas of the laboratory — which is one of the things we need to improve”
The roundtable is designed to benefit anyone with an interest in data literacy, no matter where they are in their journey. That said, Bunch believes it will be especially helpful to laboratory directors.
“At the end of the day, directors need to run their labs and have the insights they need to make appropriate decisions,” Bunch said. They must be able to investigate things when clinicals bring them problems and ingest the literature so that they can make academic contributions as well, he added.
“We’re at an inflection point in what we are capable of doing,” Bunch said. That isn’t just about preparing people for the new functionalities being unlocked by artificial intelligence (AI). It’s also about figuring out how to troubleshoot the problems AI can introduce because the technology opens up new cybersecurity risks. “The better the people are aware of these things, the better we can prevent security breaches, too,” he said.
Attendees will leave the roundtable with an abundance of resources that are relevant to each of the five data-literacy stages. They’ll also receive a one-page handout with further information.
Although Bunch created the session to accommodate individuals at all levels of data literacy, he also plans to address attendees’ specific needs, describing his approach as “fluid and driven by the audience.”
“I know people are confused about what they need to know and what the laboratory needs to know,” he said. His main goal is to change that need by providing key information and instruction in his session.
Jen A. Miller is a freelance journalist who lives in Audubon, New Jersey +Bluesky: @byjenamiller.bsky.social.
