Foreword

The global healthcare sector has been undergoing constant upheaval for over a decade. Aging populations, budget restrictions and a lack of skilled staff are making it harder than ever before to deliver high quality healthcare, and laboratory diagnostic services have suffered disproportionately in this environment. Budget cuts, recruitment freezes and shrinking reimbursements have made it increasingly difficult to maintain the quality of services and meet ambitious turnaround time targets across the disciplines. Despite the significant advances that have been made in both diagnostic and prognostic testing, senior healthcare professionals, including the laboratory management, still see the laboratory as a vending machine – a sample goes in and a result comes out. We need to change this attitude and demonstrate how closer integration of pathology with other services can drive up standards of care and improve population health, while offering significant operational savings. By moving from a reactive and adaptive approach to offering proactive and predictive services, we can show the true benefits of pathology in promoting wellness instead of simply treating illness.