laboratories Archives - Medically Speaking

By: Pinky Singh, Executive Officer, Myhealthadvisor

Laboratories square measure essential for the scientific development of abstract and theoretical information, further because the learning of scientific experiments and procedures. Nothing remains constant in science for terribly long. Within the science and technology sector, trends modification quickly, and laboratories square measure a key a part of it. The scientific community and connected professions are experimenting with the idea of constructing a “lab of the future” in recent years.

Pathology is the motor that drives tending to grasp diseases. The long run paradigm of pathology are digital. Digital technologies may push the sector into changing into a lot of economical and a lot of ascendible. They may rework the work of pathologists into a lot of artistic and data-driven profession whereas permitting patients to receive diagnoses quicker and a lot of accurately.

Pathology is one amongst the foremost vital pillars of the complete tending system. Recently, there has been a paradigm shift during this field with the inclusion of digital pathology. Live digital magnifier is one such innovation. Here, the diagnostician has complete management of the complete recording method. Through this technology, live sharing of pictures became straightforward and high resolutions snapshots of single or multi-view screen created simply by a click on the mouse.

With the dawn of medical aid, the tending sector has undergone important changes. Having aforesaid that, transformations in tending has conjointly brought changes in typical pathology rather than typical research, a medical specialist can perform a designation through interacting with pictures on laptop screens and activity measure. The digital penetrations in hospitals and completely different care management systems haven’t solely provided higher treatment for patient satisfaction, however have conjointly enabled doctors to scale their ability sets and reach to a various set of audience. Having same that, transformations in tending has conjointly brought changes in typical pathology.

The fourth generation of virtual slide tele-pathology systems, alleged virtual research and whole-slide imaging (WSI), has allowed for the storage and quick dissemination of image information in pathology and alternative medical specialty areas.

The use of digital pathology has become a boon to any or all pathologists because it saves their time and energy in detection and inspecting the slides and samples. Generally transportation of those slides became a fragile issue because of its fragile nature. But today, all due to the digital advancements created within the medical technology area. The digitized advancement conjointly comes with limitations that required to be resolved within the future for a seamless operation. As pathology pictures need terribly high resolution and image quality conjointly files have monumental sizes.

The live pictures and diagnostic tools like real –time annotations like distances and space measurements is used with none got to save the image initial. Additionally to an in depth single live image there’s conjointly a break to point out multi-view of many live pictures, along on one screen. This helps in presenting totally different stains, of a similar tissue, in one summary. As a result of this direct comparison and live identification of complicated cases is simplified and also the time to identification is dramatically reduced.

Now, labs square measure adopting electronic notebooks and processes for restrictive compliance. The repository for the intellectual capital of arduous science is dynamical from the physical to the virtual, from safes and freezers to servers that store information. This migration has created it easier to share info and permits scientists to eliminate the employment of paper laboratory notebooks and their associated repository space for storing. a lot of significantly, scientists square measure quickly adopting mobile computing platforms that create documentation a seamless, multi-media method which will be completed anyplace and shared simply (even globally). Considering the new reliance on servers, it’s imperative to supply analysis facilities with reliable information centers and network property.

The modern laboratory can revolutionize however testing square measure conducted and biopharmaceutical medicine square measure developed. These labs can bring the most recent innovations, advanced ideas, and technologies to the advantage of clinicians and patients, with a broad specialize in validation, data management, new assay development, contract analysis, new technology analysis, and R&D services within the field of genetic science and genetics. In R&D, it’ll habitually and all change hitherto inaccessible, tiny, and sophisticated experiments. Moreover, in terms of internal control, the usage of extended reality to assure school transfer, train, and supply technical help on new approaches can become present. Future labs square measure expected to integrate at-home speedy testing into patients’ medical regimens, permitting them to require more of active role in their care. It’ll return as no surprise that patients are able to contribute vital info to their medical records exploitation digitally connected hand-held devices designed for home usage. In sight of the increasing range of endemics and troublesome testing, future labs can face stiff competition from advanced hospitals and freelance laboratories.

Laboratories square measure taking strides to higher facilitate information sharing and utilize technology once attainable, whereas it’s unlikely that laptop modelling can fully replace work on live subjects for pre-clinical testing, scientists square measure currently exploitation strategies to scale back the amount of analysis subjects and choosing species that have less intensive environmental necessities. Bioinformatics can still grow as Associate in Nursing important, multidisciplinary analysis discipline, and development platforms in labs.

Vidushi Chitalia, thirty-year-old research scientist, loads a cartridge to a large screen sequencing machine. The card contains everything needed for the sequence of genomes — 20 microliters of barcoded genetic samples made by Covid-positive people pooled into a small chamber.

It took the team, which included Reem Nomani (26), and Sanika Shirsat (26) research assistants, three days to prepare the samples which made them in the machine: In the first time a selected bunch of swabs from Covid positive persons in Mumbai have been taken to inactivate the virus on the Biosafety Level 2 area, the RNA or Ribonucleic acid (which translates genetic material to protein) have been extracted and converted into the additional dioxyribonucleic acid (cDNA). These were marked with linker sequences, cleaned of all contaminations and barcoded for the machine to help connect the samples for additional steps such as barcode, a white box that was slightly larger than a microwave.

These sequencing will help identify the variants of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. And great care has been taken to select which ones will make it into the sequencer. The samples were taken from travellers arriving at the city airport, patients who had moderate to severe infection after receiving both doses of the vaccine, people who had been re-infected with Covid and those who were admitted in an Intensive Care Unit for a prolonged period of time.

“We want to focus on certain categories of patients to understand how variants impact the nature of the infection,” said Dr Jayanthi Shastri, who is at the helm of the genome sequencing facility housed inside the Kasturba Hospital’s molecular diagnostic laboratory. The lab, which works under the civic-run BYL Nair Hospital, has been operational since 2007 to study pathogens causing H1N1, dengue, and leptospirosis, among other diseases.

Last week, a batch of 376 samples of Covid-19 patients was processed and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) announced that 304 samples tested positive for the Delta subtype of the Covid-causing Sars-Cov-2 virus. None tested positive for the Delta Plus variant, a variant of concern (VOC) in India. Two samples were of the 19A subtype, four were of the 20A subtype and the remaining 66 were original strain of the coronavirus.

This was the second batch to be studied in what is Mumbai’s first facility to study the Covid disease-causing virus. The work being done here is crucial: it will help address the gaps in our understanding of the pandemic. For instance, do variants of the virus, such as the Delta variant prevalent in Mumbai and the rest of the state, play a role in breakthrough infections, re-infections or long Covid? This in turn would help civic and state authorities to decide the best course of action.

“If the SARS-CoV-2 continues to thrive, it will keep mutating,” said infectious disease specialist Dr Om Shrivastav, who is also a member of Maharashtra’s Covid-19 task force. “Genome sequencing will be our key tool to track the mutations and prepare strategies to tackle them. The changes in the virus could be more vicious or milder, but having that knowledge is the only way to combat it and stop it from spreading rapidly,” he said.

The laboratory, which was inaugurated on August 4, is not part of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) — a network of 28 laboratories across the country tasked with studying the genomes of the various variants that emerge through the course of the pandemic — but its work contributes to the larger knowledge base being created about the coronavirus and its variants.

The second batch mimicked the findings from the first: A few days after its inauguration, 188 barcoded samples were sequenced. The BMC announced that nearly 65% of these samples had the more contagious B.1.617.2 or the Delta variant. None of the 188 samples tested positive for the Delta Plus variant. Out of the 93 patients from Mumbai in the first batch, 54 had needed hospitalisation, while 40 patients showed no symptoms at all. Of the Mumbai cohort, 27 patients had taken both doses of their vaccine, and 20 had received their first dose. Only four patients out of those who had been fully vaccinated needed oxygen support.

India is currently sequencing only 0.7% of the positive samples, Shrivastav said. “Ideally, for a dense country like ours, we should be sequencing at least 33% samples. Europe, UK, parts of Australia and New Zealand have been doing a lot more sequencing,” he said adding that cities like Mumbai should have many more genome sequencing facilities.

The genome sequencing process is a lengthy one. Smaller portions of the Covid-19 samples known as aliquots collected from across the city arrive at the laboratory every day in a cold chain. These samples are stored at –80 degrees Celsius to ensure that the RNA does not degrade during the process. The sequencer — Kasturba facility has two such machines — has a capacity of 376 samples each. In order to utilise the machine optimally, the team waits till they have a pool of 376.

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