Interviews & Features

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) hosts the annual Better Hearing, Better Speech Month each May. This annual event offers the public opportunities to learn about communication disorders and the treatment provided by audiologists and speech-language pathologists.

Cytotechnology might be the most important field you’ve never heard of. Broadly speaking, cytotechnologists are lab professionals who study cells and cellular anomalies. Working closely with a pathologist, they evaluate cell samples and look for the sometimes subtle signs of cancerous or precancerous lesions, infectious agents, and inflammatory processes; this allows them to detect serious diseases when they’re still at a treatable stage.

We use our skeletal muscles every day to carry out even the simplest of tasks. Our muscles are constantly adjusting and adapting to our activity.  Skeletal muscles are specifically designed to adapt to the increased demands of exercise both physical and metabolic. Studying muscle metabolism is valuable for the creation of nutritional and exercise recommendations.

The approximately 335,500 medical laboratory professionals in the U.S. are the unsung heroes administering these tests on top of their pre-existing duties in the lab. Up until recently, these professionals have gotten little recognition for the behind-the-scenes work that they do.

March is National Kidney awareness month. The aim of this month is to educate the public about this unknown and often undetected disease. “It is about getting the word out there that kidney disease is a very common deadly disease, and we have ways to prevent it,” shares Dr. Susan Quaggin, president of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN).

With so many professionals and titles in this field, it can be challenging for clients to determine who to go to for help and what kind of help a given nutrition expert can provide. Common titles in this field include clinical nutritionist, integrative nutritionist, dietician, nutritional therapist, wellness consultant, life coach, eating disorder nutritionist, and forensic nutritionist.

It can be too easy, sometimes, to look past the work of a dental assistant. But they represent the largest segment of the dental workforce. This is a fast-growing, patient-facing role that’s much more complex than it seems.

Phlebotomists are essential members of the healthcare ecosystem. Their skill and expertise are necessary to perform venipunctures and other laboratory test sample collections. Thanks to their hard work, physicians have the test results they need to help to diagnose patients based on blood work.

Governments face enormous political and technology challenges in ensuring the safe return to “normal.” Yet, a growing distrust of government and authorities and the mental health toll from extended lockdowns and restrictions will require pandemic preparedness to focus not only on disease control but also on ensuring the protection of individual freedoms.

A new study from researchers using technology from AI company AKASA found the company’s novel machine learning approach (Read, Attend, and Code, or RAC) outperformed current state-of-the-art models to decode medical notes for patient billing in a matter of seconds.