“Pushing the envelope” is the theme of this year’s Emerging Clinical & Laboratory Diagnostics conference, which will highlight emerging, pre-market technologies that clinical laboratories will likely use in the next 3 to 5 years. 2015’s conference will take place Nov. 5-6 in Los Angeles.
The hope is attendees will come away from this conference with a sense of new possibilities, new ideas on to how to achieve them, and new colleagues to work with along the way, Jerry Cangelosi, PhD, 2015’s organizing committee chair of the conference, told CLN Stat.
“New approaches in nanotechnology, connectivity, imaging, and multiplex analysis enable diagnostic strategies that were unimaginable just a few years ago,” said Cangelosi, a professor with the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and an adjunct professor with its global health and epidemiology departments.
Exciting prospects include nanobioelectronics, wearable sensors—including wearable/printable MRI, molecular analysis of single cells, and real-time assessment of multiple pathogen and host biomarkers, Cangelosi said.
As for where diagnostic technologies might head in the future, he suggested that in the near term, “there is ample opportunity to leverage cloud connectivity to enable real-time and continuous monitoring of chronic conditions and indicators.”
Longer-term opportunities include implantable or indigestible nano-sensors that assess internal health parameters. Keeping that in mind, Joseph Wang’s keynote talk on self-propelled nano-laboratories should be especially intriguing, Cangelosi noted. Wang chairs the Department of Nanoengineering at the University of California, San Diego.
“In addition, continued progress in systems biology will open new opportunities for applying cellular, molecular, and ‘omic’ approaches to diagnostics. Progress in any of these areas will enable completely novel diagnostic strategies,” Cangelosi said.
Register online to attend this exciting conference and learn more about the pre-market technologies that will impact laboratory medicine’s future.