Contents In this issue Cover story 8 News & numbers 10


The headlines and vital statistics impacting healthcare.


Diagnostics 10 New blood


The almost total shutdown in invasive cancer diagnostics during the first wave of Covid-19 focused attention on the need for alternatives. Now, all eyes are turning to liquid biopsies. Tim Gunn talks to Naureen Starling, consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust in London and a clinical senior lecturer at the Institute for Cancer Research, about how simple blood tests could save lives.


14 Differentiation of Covid-19 from seasonal infections Mobidiag


15 The defence of antibiotics CerTest


16 For the detection of CMV in infants


DiaSorin Molecular


19 T-cell response to Covid-19 Oxford Immunotec


Practical Patient Care / www.practical-patient-care.com 35


20 The future is in vitro diagnostics British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA)


22 True positives


When they work, Covid-19 tests are good for one yes or no question. If only deciding how to use them were so simple. Repeatedly, mass testing programmes using lateral flow tests have foundered on the risks of false negatives, but the more reliable PCR tests remain too costly to implement on a wide enough scale. Abi Millar speaks to Niraj Jha, co-founder of AI company NeuTigers, Timothy Plante from the University of Vermont and Melanie Ott, director of the


Gladstone Institute of Virology, about using machine learning, wearables and even CRISPR to find a middle path out of the pandemic.


25 Rapid molecular diagnostics Abacus Diagnostica


26 Advance of sepsis testing Bruker


29 Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 immune responses EUROIMMUN


30 Time management It’s been decades since developers realised workflows dominated by hours of repetitive pipetting were market opportunities for pipetting robots, but automation has not impacted all clinical laboratories equally. Now, as even complex, heterogeneous microbiology begins to reap the benefits, Isabel Ellis asks Felix Lenk, head of the SmartLab systems research group at TU Dresden, and Nate Ledeboer, medical director for clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, how ‘total’ automation might reinvent laboratory medicine.


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