8 BIOEdit
BioSpectrum | November 2017 | www. biospectrumindia. com
Diagnosing- the right way!
Process of many medical treatments begin from the pathology labs with doctors recommending some diagnostic tests to the patient. The number of treatment processes beginning with the diagnostic tests in the labs is growing faster as doctors’ dependence on tests to detect a disease and line of treatment is also increasing due to various reasons. The diagnostic tests have thus become a crucial aspect in the treatment since correct diagnosis lead to correct analysis and further to correct line of treatment.
In the diagnostic tests sector, India is now entering into a new important era with leading laboratories from four nations – India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and UAE coming together to launch India’ s first Global Pathology Laboratory Consortium called Neuberg Diagnostics. It will have three world class global reference labs in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Durban( South Africa). As these labs will have a global reference, no doubt they will have facilities for advanced range of testing using new generation techniques at all levels with big data analytics tools and lab information systems.
This development is an indicator of the potential this sector holds. It is considered to be a booming sector.
India is estimated to have over one lakh diagnostic and pathology labs providing services to patients. But this is only an estimate as the count and is not even documented, according to Association of Practicing Pathologists of India( APPI). Even if the estimated number of one lakh is considered, though it appears to be a big one it is actually very small considering the population of the country, which is nearly 1.3 billion and still growing. Several rural areas are still deprived of such facilities. At many places the facilities are available just for name sake – either they are providing just some basic tests or they are not functional. Condition of labs in smaller government healthcare establishments is bad. Thus, India needs many more labs and that too in good and proper working conditions. Hardly 10 % of the labs are in organized sector while 90 % fall in
the unorganized sector. As per APPI’ s information just over 650 labs are accredited.
One important issue related to these labs, which came into forefront following a recent Delhi High Court decision, is the verification of reports. The court has ruled in favour of the medical council’ s decision that the test reports of patients should be verified and certified by only post-graduate medical practitioner pathologists registered with medical council and its state units. The general practice in many labs is that the lab technicians, who are diploma holders or equivalent conduct the tests and sign the reports also. On Medical Council of India’ s stand, Association of Clinical Microbiologists and Biochemists( ACMB) moved the court claiming that they too are qualified and can conduct tests. Court’ s decision is an important step forward in the direction of professionalism. Although there could be some issues in its implementation – which there are always when a new rule is implemented – they can be overcome. One major issue in the way of making this sector more professional is that it lacks proper regulatory system, although the central government notified certain standards for the labs and divided them into three categories( as basic, medium and advanced).
However, a lot more needs to be done to provide relief to patients. Metro cities and some two tier cities are now having highly professional labs with certain minimum standards. While increasing the number of labs on one side, particularly in rural and remote areas, they have to be brought to a certain minimum level and standards. And more importantly they need to be monitored on regular basis. Forming an international consortium to set up international level labs will not change everything in one day. But such steps percolate the practices and surely help in making others to move into the direction of good practices. That is the importance of developing an international consortium for diagnostic labs.
Milind Kokje Chief Editor milind. kokje @ mmactiv. com