William Morice, II, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic and President of Mayo Clinic Laboratories, joins the Answers from the Lab podcast for his weekly leadership update. On this episode, Dr. Morice discusses the launch of our new neutralizing antibody assay. He also provides a six-month update on where we are today with COVID-19, and the challenges of balancing testing demand with available resources.
Show Notes
Full Show Notes (Timestamps)
Speaker 1: (
00:50)
So this is now our six months in a world with COVID-19, which is just amazing. What is new in terms of testing at Mayo Clinic Laboratories for COVID-19?
Speaker 1: (
02:23)
It has the potential to really help a lot of patients, if you can show that giving convalescent plasma is going to be helpful to our patients struggling with COVID-19.
Speaker 1: (
04:04)
So as chair for our department, what are some of your considerations now when balancing the huge volumes of COVID testing we're doing with all these other necessary laboratory tests?
Speaker 1: (
08:16)
How has that impacted our laboratory operations and being able to provide that critical testing for our patients?
Speaker 2: (
09:37)
COVID-19 is still clearly ravaging the globe. I think there'll be a renewed focus to make sure that access to both the diagnostics and the care is equitable across this country and across the world and on the heels of that, to really address some of the health care disparity issues that need to be addressed. So as painful as it is, the only way we can make meaning out of that pain is to actually understand the source and to really drive and make meaningful changes.
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A Mayo Clinic curated podcast sharing Mayo Clinic knowledge and advancements on the state of testing, science, and people who are making it happen behind the scenes.