The Laboratory Medicine Department of West China Hospital was established in 2003 through reorganization, consisting of 5 sub-specialized labs, such as the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory, Clinical Examination and Blood Laboratory, Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, Clinical Immunology Laboratory and Clinical Molecular Diagnosis Laboratory. In 2010, the department was selected as the key special clinical examination department by the Ministry of Health due to its achievements. It ranked third in the 2018 Comprehensive Ranking of the Best Examination Specialties of Chinese Hospitals. Currently, it is the most advanced laboratory medicine center in China, rendering the largest number of testing items with the strongest capacity of sample testing and the most advanced testing techniques. At present, it can test nearly 600 items, and complete over 20,000 samples per day. Its service tenet is “excellent techniques, accurate testing results and superior services.
High-level teams: The Laboratory Medicine Department has now 134 staff members, including 29 with senior titles, 62 with mid-level titles, 52 with a doctoral degree or higher, 25 with master’s degree, 3 post-doctors, 19 master’s advisors and 4 doctoral advisors.
Whole-process medical examination platform& system: The Laboratory Medicine Department has made breakthrough in establishing China's individualized drug effect analysis platform for drug-related genes and concentration, individualized testing platform for transplantation immune tolerance, diagnosis platform for single gene inheritance diseases, technological platform for individualized diagnosis of hematologic tumors, diagnosis platform for diseases infected by mycobacterium tuberculosis, and technological platform for HIV preliminary screening and confirmation and nucleic acid testing, etc. Therefore, a new medical examination platform and system has been formed from early screening and examination, lab-assisted diagnosis, disease assessment to clinical treatment monitoring and prognosis.
First-ever unit accredited by CAP: The Laboratory Medicine Department was accredited by the American CAP in June 2006, and became the first clinical medicine experimental center in China certified with CAP; also it passed the accreditation review of CAP by virtue of its excellent results in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018, respectively. The sub-specialty of the Department participated in annual quality external assessment of NCCL, with the coverage up to 99.98%, a mean coverage of 89.6%, with a mean pass rate of 97%. It has also established international cooperation platforms with the Erasmus Medical Center in Holland and the Mayo Medical Center in the United States.
Abundant academic outcoems: Over the recent years, the Department has won 68 national projects, 71 provincial projects, 6 national invention patents, and 7 patents for utility models. The department published 522 papers in international or domestic journals, including 181 SCI articles. The staff members took the lead or participated in the formation of 9 industrial standards of the State. Nearly 150 people served as editors-in-chief, deputy editors-in-chief or editors of some professional textbooks or books by publishing houses, such as People’s Medical Publishing House and Higher Education Press.
Education and training: The Laboratory Medicine Department undertakes the tasks of training and education of undergraduates, postgraduates, doctoral students, resident physicians, and visiting physicians of medical laboratory major in the West China School of Medicine every year. In the development of laboratory medicine education, in 2004, it launched the first five-year education system of senior in-house laboratory technician training program and the two-year laboratory technician training program, with the aim of exploring a better path of cultivating capable laboratorians in China.
Serve more patients by providing technical services at grassroots level: The Department has been positively spreading its advanced testing technologies to the grassroots level, and admitted more than 400 visiting physicians from more than 10 provinces; it has trained over 10,000 laboratorians of all levels in the western region, and granted training subsidies to over 500 personnel from multi-national regions and areas hardly-hit by earthquake in West China, including Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet, Guizhou and Yunnan; it has also conducted more than 200 testing skill trainings for 500 hospitals within the network of West China Hospital and the regional hospital alliance, and offered more than 100,000 guidances per year; it has dispatched its technical backbone personnel to serve as part time department heads at the grassroots hospitals, and signed the agreements of entrusted tests with more than 40 grassroots hospitals.
