Fifty years ago, Cleon (Guy) LeMont, a central Minnesota entrepreneur, opened a testing laboratory with a focus on detecting microbiological contamination in water, the environment, and food. Named Environmental Protection Laboratories, the company began making its own microbiological supplies, including…
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According to the World Health Organization, over one million sexually transmitted infections are contracted every day. Infection rates have been steadily increasing, reaching new records each year since 2014, but public awareness of STIs is not keeping pace. How much…
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What if the latest tech device had all the bells and whistles everyone wanted and was far better than anything currently being sold, but the marketer was told he could not sell it until all the previous versions of his…
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Less than 20 years ago, STIs were at historic lows. Syphilis was close to elimination. In 2021, however, sexually transmitted infections are at an all-time high, yet the importance of prevention and screening seems to have fallen by the wayside….
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In a time when we have come to rely on medical laboratory professionals more and more, we also run the risk of taking their work for granted. Their work is so integral to our health and everyday life that most…
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About every 22 seconds, someone dies from Tuberculosis. As the deadliest bacterial infection worldwide, Tuberculosis causes or contributes to 1-1.5 million deaths per year, recently surpassing HIV as the deadliest single infectious agent. Around ten million people become sick with…
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Although it is largely forgotten today, just five years before the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Zika virus was making headlines. In early 2016, the World Health Organization declared the Zika epidemic a public health emergency, as evidence mounted that the Zika…
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Since we launched our Custom Solutions program for environmental isolates and objectionable organisms in 2011, the most common strains have remained remarkably consistent. Even as the customers we serve (and the products they manufacture) have become increasingly diversified, the top…
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A typical flu season presents significant challenges for medical laboratories with increased demand and pressure for providing quick and accurate diagnostic testing. But what happens when you combine this already demanding time with the global COVID-19 pandemic? No one can…
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The Critical Role of QC in Every Stage of Assay Development and Usage For anyone of us involved in medical laboratory or public health laboratory testing, we understand the critical importance of clinical quality control (QC). With the ongoing fallout…
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