In about a month, MedicalLab Management will celebrate its fourth anniversary, having launched our first issue in the summer of 2012. As with any great journey, it is important to acknowledge professional milestones gained and surpassed, and to appropriately recognize the effort required to do so. As the age old adage goes, Rome was not built in a day. Laboratory technology and practice evolves at an accelerating pace, so it can be easy to forget the accomplishments—both large and small—that form an adaptable laboratory practice.

Without question, clinical laboratory practice requires the combined, ongoing efforts of numerous laboratorians, pathologists, technicians and technologists, and a variety of clinicians in order to function at a high level in today’s medical environment. This is why, at MLM, we seek out authors and contributors from a wide gamut of clinical laboratory practice. The main goal is to find those medical professionals who not only seek to perpetually improve their practice, but also recognize the past accomplishments that allow for such improvement. Whether the author is a bench tech with 25 years’ experience or a young lab director thrust into the limelight, all of us are standing on the shoulders of giants.

In this month’s issue, we look at the benefits and challenges of mass spectrometry and immunoassay methods for clinical diagnostics (see page 2). Just a short time ago, few laboratories knew much at all about mass spectrometry, let alone its potential benefits to the clinical lab. Now, such leaps in testing and diagnostic technology seem to come along every few months.

We also investigate methods for body fluid validation (see page 6) and exercising prudent quality control when managing hematology critical values (see our cover story on page 12). These advancements were directly enabled by a long line of previous victories in the research and clinical application of novel medical, scientific, and technological breakthroughs.

As MedicalLab Management celebrates our own milestones, we encourage you to pause and take a look back as well. Take pride in both the successes and failures that helped shape your laboratory practice. Another ancient proverb says, better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. We hope to continue helping you buff and shape that diamond, and recognize that perfection is just outside our grasp.

With best regards,

David McCormick
Managing Editor