In response to disease diagnosis, treatment monitoring, and prevention of disease, clinical examinations have become an indispensable role in modern medical development. By adopting laboratory science methods, clinical examinations provide quantitative data or reports that objectively reflect the patient's condition and offer important medical evidence for patient care, such as verification, exclusion, guidance, and monitoring. With advances in medical science and the increasing needs of patients, the demand for quality also rises year by year, the testing technology develops by leaps and bounds, and the technology that can be applied in clinical testing is also changing with each passing day. In addition to conventional routine tests, such as on liver function, renal function, and blood and urine, the molecular testing is aimed at personalized medicine, arranging various tests for oncogenes, cancer risk genes, and cerebral and cardiovascular risk genes, along with new fields such as biomedical information, which are slowly applied and integrated into clinical examinations and increase the complexity of clinical testing work. Even so, the correctness and immediacy of the testing can be greatly improved. As the medical environment becomes more and more severe and the demands by customers are growing, the department is inevitably confronted with the challenges of talent cultivation, operations and management, cost control, and other issues.  

The department, currently headed by Professor Jan-gowth Chang, consists of divisions of Blood Bank, General Laboratory Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Molecular Diagnostics, and Academia-Industry Department, and the Section of Quality Assurance and Teaching, in which the specialists and senior medical laboratory scientists serve as the directors, jointly planning and leading the direction for the development of testing business, teaching, and research. The technical unit is divided into six sections of Blood Bank, Blood and Microscopy, Biomedical Sciences, Sero-immunity, Microbiome, and Meristem, each of which has a chief, who implements the activities of inspection of quality management, medical laboratory science, and total quality management (TQM). At present, there are 86 staff members for a total of 402 test items, with the services mainly targeting the patients and doctors in the hospital. The department supports special testing by the system of the hospital and assists the testing business commissioned by hospitals at all levels and clinics in the central region, while receiving visits from people across the world or training medical personnel from other institutions, and conducting international clinical trials. From 24/7 blood bank service and emergency test operations to common checkup items; from transplant tests to personalized genetic testing, its services cover a wide range of categories. In terms of overall operations and management, the department places emphasis on professionalism, accuracy, rapidity, and safety, which are important core values. All of its staff members are working together to offer perfect, quality testing services, cultivate excellent talents in laboratory medicine, and strive to safeguard laboratory and patient safety.

 

All of our staff members are running testing business through teamwork, and with good laboratory quality management, pursue innovation and excellence and endeavor to meet the international first-class standards of clinical laboratories. With this vision as the goal of quality improvement for all our staff to attain, we are committed to keeping abreast of international trends. In June 30, 2002, it successfully passed ISO 15189 medical laboratories by the Taiwan Accreditation Foundation (TAF), thereby setting up a laboratory quality management platform, which was a milestone for the department. With laboratory accreditation, we enhance professionalism and management systems in an all-round manner. Through TAF regular supervision and evaluations and extension authentication, we will continue to maintain professional ability and carry out sustained improvements. In 2007 and 2010, the department was awarded the Benchmark Laboratory Award from the TAF. In order for laboratory professional technical ability to reach international standards, the department participated in the Collage of American Pathology-Laboratory Accreditation Program (CAP-LAP) in December 2008 and passed successfully. The accreditation procedure is rigorous, and all inspection items must be judged up to standard by the external accuracy test, which can be used to objectively verify the stability of the test system. It completed a checklist with up to more than 2000 expertise items, confirming international standards of professional skills and equipment. The department’s professional ability has formally kept up with international standards and become a clinical laboratory at international level

 

In 2011, the department worked with the Children's Medical Center and National Chiao Tung University in applying matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) technology to the identification of the variant heme amino acid sequence. In addition, the department published the effect of the high resolution melting (HRM) method applied to the differential diagnosis of β-thalassemi genotypes in an international journal. With such innovation combining molecular test principles and special technology, the department in 2011 won the Symbol of National Quality for the "Mediterranean anemia and hemoglobin gene lesions treatment team" from the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI).