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The lab-on-a-chip concept has always fascinated researchers, laboratorians, and the public. Now, as smartphone and other mobile devices push the limits of mobile computing and mobile connectivity, diagnostics is on the verge of moving into a new era of personal responsibility for better health.

Hear Eric Topol, MD, describe the new opportunities that exist with mobile technologies and how these innovations will change the future of laboratory testing in a podcast from Clinical Chemistry.

A panel of experts has called for improved measurement of the sex steroid hormone, estradiol, including standardized measurement as well as age- sex- and biologically-specific reference ranges. Modern immunoassays and mass spectrometry methods are adequate for diagnosing and managing infertility in women. However, even as a growing body of evidence indicates that very low concentrations of estradiol have important effects in non-reproductive tissues, measurement of these low levels remains imperfect.

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Immunoassays that measure thyroid-stimulating hormone play a crucial role in the diagnosis and management of thyroid disease. But inter-assay discrepancies lead to unreliable results, a problem that an international harmonization effort hopes to solve.

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The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics released a policy statement recommending that women undergo invasive testing to confirm positive results from non-invasive prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy. Additionally, ACMG compiled a list of 24 conditions and associated genes and variants that should be reported for incidental findings from whole exome or genome sequencing.

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