- Genetics studies grow by 20% in just one year and the Ribera health group laboratory now has a new Genetic Counseling Service
- It has implemented and developed the conventional Microbiology Area and has completed the transformation of its central laboratory, which already serves five group hospitals and the Vinalopó health department
Ribera Lab, the laboratory division of the healthcare group Ribera, has carried out more than half a million tests referenced in 2022, which represents an increase of 12% in the global calculation of its activity with respect to the previous year.
One of the areas that has grown exponentially in the last year has been Genetics, with a total of 19.000 tests carried out, which represents a growth of 20% compared to the previous year, coinciding with the start-up of the new Service of Genetic Counseling, which has a specialist physician in this area in charge. The group's central laboratory has created the Ribera Lab Clinical Genetics Unit, "an area with advanced technology that will offer the best comprehensive care to patients with genetic and rare diseases and carry out a comprehensive approach to clinical diagnosis, guaranteeing greater speed and reliability of the results", as explained by Mayte Alarcón, director of Ribera Lab.
In recent years, Alarcón points out, "molecular biology has revolutionized the scientific field, allowing the development of Personalized and Precision Medicine, which enables a preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic approach suitable for each patient".
Last year the conventional Microbiology Area was also implemented and developed, state-of-the-art automated equipment was installed in its central laboratory in Torrellano (Elche) and the specific equipment in the rest of the laboratory areas was expanded "adapting it to the demands and needs of our patients. In addition, "the comprehensive transformation of a laboratory that, until two years ago, only covered the reference activity in a routine laboratory, has now been carried out, to now assume the activity of our hospitals and since January of this year, a complete health area such as Vinalopó, in Elche”, explains its director. In the last two years, Ribera Lab has taken over the laboratory activity of the Ribera Hospital de Molina and the Ribera Polusa, Ribera Juan Cardona, Ribera Povisa and the Vinalopó University Hospital hospitals.
But the sustained and planned growth of Ribera Lab has taken a big step with the assumption of the laboratory activity of the Vinalopó Health Department, which began on January 1 of this year and has been prepared throughout the third quarter of last year. .
This growth in activity has also meant the expansion of its central laboratory facilities, which has multiplied by ten the square meters for carrying out determinations and tests. In this period of time, it has gone from 200 daily samples to 1.500, which has, in turn, meant a considerable increase in the staff, which has gone from 40 to 86 professionals, between the central laboratory and the laboratories of the integrated hospitals.
Mayte Alarcón, director of Ribera Lab, highlights the added value that supports a laboratory with 20 years of experience in genetic studies, with a super specialization of all the professionals, and that is now capable of providing comprehensive coverage to a health area such as that of Vinalopó”.
