2 Sep 2022
In this video, Dr. Stephen Master, Chief of the Division of Laboratory Medicine, and Director of the Metabolic Lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia describes what AACC has accomplished during the year he has been president. This includes working on projects that focus on literacy and data analytics for members, the value of laboratory medicine, diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Association. Master also discusses the importance of effective communication between professionals in the field of laboratory medicine and their clinical colleagues, to better achieve the shared industry goal of providing the highest quality healthcare to patients - a key theme highlighted during the 2022 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo.
♪ [music] ♪ I'm Dr. Stephen Master. I'm Chief of the Division of Laboratory Medicine at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and I also am the Director of the metabolic lab at CHOP. I'm just completing a year as AACC president and I've been really excited to be able to serve in this role. We've been able to accomplish a number of great things. Obviously, we're just finishing a very successful annual scientific meeting. But we've also had larger projects focusing on literacy and data analytics for our members, focusing on the value of laboratory medicine, focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion within our association and as we serve the broader public. So it's been a great opportunity to be involved in laboratory medicine at this level. It's really important that professionals in laboratory medicine are good communicators with their clinical colleagues. We're all interested in serving the patient. That's the primary goal that we all have. And if we don't have communication about what laboratory values mean, what their limitations are, how they can best be utilized and interpreted, we don't have that freeform communication with our clinical colleagues. We won't do the best job that's possible for delivering high-quality healthcare. One of the ways we can continue to ensure that we have this good communication, I think, is by communicating what the value of laboratory medicine is. It's important that we as laboratorians are able to articulate what the value is for that patient care experience, how it is that we can quantitate that and we're working very closely with other colleagues to try and develop the dataset that will let us make that case in the best way possible. This is a tremendously exciting era for laboratory medicine. I think that the pandemic really showed the value of laboratory medicine in the way that we were necessary for management of public health during this crisis. I think we can now build on that. We can add more value. We can add more diagnostic information as we interact with our colleagues and with the broader community nationally and internationally to further global health. ♪ [music] ♪
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Stephen Master is Chief of the Division of Laboratory Medicine, and Director of the Metabolic Laboratory at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Master’s research at CHOP involves investigating the biochemical pathways related to inborn errors of metabolism as well as using machine learning and bioinformatics to solve problems in mass spectrometry and laboratory medicine. Master also served a term as president of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) from August 2021 – July 2022, using this position to improve healthcare through the advancement of laboratory medicine.