CHICAGO – Abbott Diagnostics (Abbott Park, Illinois) launched a campaign called "Labs Are Vital" – designed to educate both healthcare providers and patients about the value and importance of clinical labs – during the American Association for Clinical Chemistry's (AACC; Washington) annual meeting here this week.

The campaign, it said, will be a multi-pronged public awareness effort, including advertising and an "information-rich" web site – at www.labsarevital.com – in an effort to meet head-on the challenges that labs and those who work in them face: most significantly, the looming shortage of lab workers.

The effort also includes about $1 million in donations from Abbott to med-tech schools in the form of grants.

Don Patton, vice president of global diagnostics commercial operations at Abbott, outlined the effort in a teleconference last week, saying, "Specifically, as we look at the labor shortage, there's an interesting statistic projected by the U.S. Department of Labor that by the year 2012." That statistic projects the U.S. needing 138,000 laboratory professionals by that date but only 42,000 additional trained and available.

"The brain drain in that segment of the healthcare professional market is real," he said, "and how we address that is critical to all of us."

The shortage already affects patients, Abbott said, as some people are required to travel long distances for testing due to lab consolidation fueled by increasing financial pressures on healthcare systems.

The campaign kicked off in downtown Chicago during the AACC meeting, with Patton predicting that it will have "a lot of impact."

Another component of the campaign will be to educate physicians concerning the importance of laboratory scientists by having those professionals appear at physician-oriented trade shows, where they can talk one-on-one with physicians to inform them of their needs and the daily challenges they face – all toward the goal of having physicians better appreciate what they provide to the overall healthcare system.

Abbott said that in a survey of laboratory professionals it found that while they are aware of the challenges, they don't quite know how to tackle them. What the surveys found included comments from lab workers who responded with comments indicating significant discouragement

As examples:

"We're at the bottom of the pecking order – nobody pays attention to us."

"Nobody knows us; there's no vice president of labs."

"There's no connection to the top."

Patton said that at this level of the industry "[t]here's a lot of discussion about whether they are appreciated for the value of their role in medical testing. In their minds, specifically, it's not as well-known or understood as well as they believe it should be."

He said the laboratory community is looking to companies such as Abbott, which is joining other, existing efforts to promote laboratory science as a career path. And he said that there is increasing discussion concerning "the tools and techniques [needed] to rally roughly about 100,000 lab professionals in the U.S. alone."

And he noted that one way these companies have been addressing the lab worker shortage is through increasing automation.

The company isn't stopping at the borders of the U.S. with its campaign, it said. It expects to roll out the campaign in international markets "over the coming months," according to Patton.

He said that challenges such as budgeting and the lack of awareness or appreciation for the role that laboratory professionals play "becomes even more complicated with [the] increased role of medical testing's importance."

And the importance of this role is increasing in tandem with the increase in the number of tests and their growing sophistication – such as molecular testing – being developed for a variety of purposes.

Patton noted that roughly 70% of a patient's healthcare record is composed of laboratory results and other information generated from lab work.

"Clearly, the lab has dramatic influence and helping them demonstrate that importance across a range of audiences is what 'Labs Are Vital' is partly designed to do," he said, "[by] elevating the profile of the lab within the entire healthcare matrix and healthcare delivery."

Another component of the campaign will be to act as a forum for information on careers and other topics important to laboratory scientists, as well as a forum to transfer practices and ideas within the lab professional community.