Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Apr 8;59(6):1035-1045.
doi: 10.1515/cclm-2021-0367. Print 2021 May 26.

Laboratory medicine in the COVID-19 era: six lessons for the future

Mario Plebani  1   2
Affiliations

Laboratory medicine in the COVID-19 era: six lessons for the future

Mario Plebani. Clin Chem Lab Med. .

Abstract

The lockdown due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a major healthcare challenge, is a worldwide threat to public health, social stability, and economic development. The pandemic has affected all aspects of society, dramatically changing our day-to-day lives and habits. It has also changed clinical practice, including practices of clinical laboratories. After one year, it is time to rethink what has happened, and is still happening, in order to learn lessons for the future of laboratory medicine and its professionals. While examining this issue, I was inspired by Italo Calvino's famous work, "Six memos for the next millennium".But I rearranged the Author's six memos into "Visibility, quickness, exactitude, multiplicity, lightness, consistency".

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; consistency; laboratory medicine; quality; quickness; visibility.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Grazzi, L, Rizzoli, P. Lessons from lockdown – behavioural interventions in migraine. Nat Rev Neurol 2021 Feb 26. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-021-00475-y [Epub ahead of print].
    1. Calvino, I. Six memos for the next millennium. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 1988.
    1. Plebani, M. Antibody responses in mild COVID-19 hospital staff. EBioMedicine 2020;59:102940. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2020.102940.
    1. Mizumoto, K, Kagaya, K, Zarebski, A, Chowell, G. Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Yokohama, Japan, 2020. Euro Surveill 2020;25:2000180. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.
    1. Ferretti, L, Wymant, C, Kendall, M, Zhao, L, Nurtay, A, Abeler-Dörner, L, et al.. Fraser Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing. Science 2020;368:eabb6936. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb6936.

LinkOut - more resources