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The future of pathology services in the NHS is currently under consideration. Recent developments in diagnostic technologies and their possible impact on pathology testing in the future are discussed. Trends and patterns of demand for all three main pathology specialties are analysed over the 12‐year period, 1974‐86. The inflation‐adjusted, revenue cost of pathology testing per hospital admission (excluding capital costs) is shown to have fallen in real terms over this period, although it is uncertain whether this would still be the case were capital costs to be included. In the hospital sector, reported increases in demand can be quite simply related to increasing hospital activity by using a linear regression model. However, the very large increases in demand observed in the primary care sector cannot be related reasonably to any routinely reported practice activity indicators. The implications of this highly volatile pattern of demand in general practice are discussed, especially in relation to recent technological advances designed to produce rapid, near‐patient, surgery‐based tests. Although analysis indicates no evidence for historical technology‐induced increases in demand for laboratory services following the introduction of laboratory automation in the 1970s, the possibility of technology‐induced demand in the primary health care sector following the widespread introduction of surgery‐based tests is discussed.

This paper aims to analyze the organization of storytelling and its role in creating and sharing practical knowledge for cancer diagnosis in a medical community in Italy.

The qualitative analysis draws upon different interactional data sets: naturally occurring diagnostic conversations among physicians in the ward, research interviews, video-based sessions in which physicians watch and discuss their diagnostic work.

The results highlight: the specific organization of storytelling practices in medical diagnostic work; three main functions that such storytelling practices play in supporting collaborative diagnostic work in the community of our study; and how storytelling practices are resources on which participants rely across settings, including ad hoc reflexive meetings.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the role that storytelling plays in the diagnostic work in an understudied and yet life-saving site such as oncology.

Purpose – This chapter presents a case for reframing medical sociology to focus on diagnosis as a pivotal category of analysis via an extended literature review of the diagnosis as a tool of medicine.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual overview.

Practical implications – By reviewing the range of social functions served by diagnosis, and the similarly wide assortment of social forces that shape diagnostic categories, this chapter pushes social scientists and theorists to consider diagnosis as a cornerstone to the understanding of health, illness, and disease.

Originality/value of paper – Building on Brown's earlier call for a sociology of diagnosis, this chapter sets forth potential parameters for this field. It defines how the study of diagnosis is dissipated across myriad areas of scholarship, including medicalization, disease theory, ethics, classification theory, and history of medicine. Extirpating diagnosis and revealing it for specific discussion provides an opportunity to study topics such as illness experiences, health social movements, and disease recognition from a different and rich perspective.

To describe a new high sensitivity, nanotechnology‐based technique for detecting DNA and disease‐related proteins.

Gold nanoparticles and magnetic microparticles are bound to single‐stranded DNA molecules that are complementary to segments of the target DNA. The nanoparticles also link to hundreds of strands of “barcode” DNA and in the presence of the target, each molecule binds to a gold nanoparticle and a magnetic microparticle. Applying a magnetic field enables the separation of the target molecules and their attachments. The DNA is removed from the molecules and detected by a chip‐based DNA procedure. As each nanoparticle links to a large number of strands of DNA, the method amplifies the signal from each target molecule. The technique can also detect proteins by replacing the complimentary DNA with antibodies.

This research shows that this technique can detect very low concentrations of DNA and proteins. Ten copies of anthrax DNA were detected in 30 μl of solution, a sensitivity comparable to polymerase chain reaction, and 18‐20 PSA molecules were detected in a 10 μl sample, a level of detection that is six orders of magnitude more sensitive than conventional assays. Recent research has also shown that the assay can detect ADDLs, which are biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease. The technologies are now being commercialised by Nanosphere, Inc.

These developments offer prospects in a wide range of clinical applications such as the rapid and simple diagnosis of a variety of diseases and single nucleotide polymorphisms tests for the detection of hypercoagulation disorders. Other potential applications include homeland security and environmental monitoring.

Building a bioeconomy requires efficient technology transfer and global linkages to exploit finite intellectual property exclusivity periods. The purpose of this paper, using a resource‐based view lens, is to assess the priorities, capabilities, and competitiveness of the emerging New Zealand (NZ) bioeconomy.

A triangulated design was used that involved four focus groups, 27 interviews, five case studies, and survey of 176 NZ biotechnology industry participants from a broad range of backgrounds such as scientists, managers, and investors.

Two high‐priority capabilities were identified as being critical to fostering a competitive bioeconomy – access to talent and access to funding. Participants also identified the critical role of government in building and coordinating infrastructure, enabling critical capabilities, and accelerating bi‐directional technology and capital flows.

Most biotechnology research and data has focused on the USA and European Union. This is one of the first studies of NZ biotechnology participants, and insights gained within this context are potentially applicable for increasing our understanding of building biotechnology industries outside established clusters.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and its effect on human resource management (HRM) practices, contextual ambidexterity and knowledge-intensive small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) strategic agility.

This study presents an in-depth qualitative case study analysis of two knowledge-intensive SMEs from India’s information technology and health-care products industry serving a range of global clients. Using the theoretical lenses of empowerment-focused HRM practices, ambidextrous leaders, contextual ambidexterity and strategic agility, semi-structured interview data of leaders, managers and employees of the case organizations were analysed. Through a two-staged analytical process, we abductively developed a novel conceptual framework at the intersection of the above theoretical lenses.

The findings suggest that the knowledge-intensive SME’s strategic agility, ambidexterity and empowerment-focussed HRM approach was influenced by the owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and their philosophy towards managing people and had a positive impact in creating a culture of trust, participation, risk-taking and openness, and led to delivering innovative products and services as well as several positive employee-level outcomes.

Recent literature reviews on HRM In SMEs highlight several gaps, including the impact of owner-manager or leader’s philosophy of managing people in shaping HRM practices and employee outcomes. This paper thus adds to the existing literature on HRM and knowledge-intensive SMEs.

Purpose – Intersexuality is examined from a sociology of diagnosis frame to show how the diagnostic process is connected to other social constructions, offer new support that medical professionals define illness in ways that sometimes carries negative consequences, and illustrate how the medical profession holds on to authority in the face of patient activism.

Methodology/approach – Data collection occurred over a two-year period (October 2008 to August 2010). Sixty-two in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals connected to the intersex community including adults with intersexuality, parents, medical professionals, and intersex activists.

Findings – Medical professionals rely on essentialist understandings of gender to justify the medicalization of intersexuality, which they currently are doing through a nomenclature shift away from intersex terminology in favor of disorders of sex development (DSD) language. This shift allows medical professionals to reassert their authority and reclaim jurisdiction over intersexuality in light of intersex activism that was successfully framing intersexuality as a social rather than biological problem.

Practical implications – This chapter encourages critical thought and action from activists and medical professionals about shifts in intersex medical management.

Social implications – Intersexuality might be experienced in less stigmatizing ways by those personally impacted.

Originality/value – The value of this research is that it connects the sociology of diagnosis literature with gender scholarship. Additional value comes from the data, which were collected after the 2006 nomenclature shift.

Wellness tourism is complex due to the varied expectations and perceptions of tourists. This study attempts to explore components that shape tourist expectations of health treatments and tourist attractions, which have not been deeply explored in the extant literature.

A scoping review of the literature published between 2000 and 2021 was conducted to reach the conclusions of this study. Out of 303 literature sources, a total of 105 literature sources were retained for the final analysis.

Findings show that tourists expect a mix of health treatments, such as conventional medical treatments and alternative health treatments and tourist attractions, as part of wellness tourism to improve their health and well-being (HWB). A favorable trade-off between tourist expectations and their perception of wellness tourism impacts tourist HWB and behavioral intention.

The proposed wellness tourism conceptual model and wellness tourism matrix may help wellness tourism service providers to understand tourist expectations for health treatments and tourist attractions in a recent context. Wellness tourism service providers may follow the guidelines outlined in this study to offer health treatments and tourist attractions according to tourist expectations, which may result in the favorable behavioral intentions of wellness tourists.

This study unravels the previously under-explored role of conventional medical treatments, which arguably fall under the category of allopathic medical treatment, in wellness tourism. Destination marketing organizations may focus on the wellness philosophies of health treatments and tourist attractions to meet the growing expectations of wellness tourists for HWB, as outlined in the literature review. This study provides insights into the different components of contemporary wellness tourism those impact wellness tourists' cognitive responses, HWB and behavioral intention.

Purpose – Health information technology (HIT) has been lauded as a foundation upon which the development of an integral solution to cost and quality problems facing many nations is predicated. Countries throughout the world have taken differing approaches in their efforts to advance that foundation through policy, financial, and cultural systems that come to support or hinder adoption. As we explore potential opportunities to learn from the experience of others, we pause to consider the environmental, regulatory, financial, and social dynamics that define the US context.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter outlines the framework for a comparative approach through four dimensions – environmental, regulation, financial, and social – through which comparative HIT studies should be explored.

Findings – With such markedly different contexts in which their HIT is embedded, it is important to not simply look at other countries as a yardstick upon which we compare our failures and successes. Rather, we must look critically at these examples understanding that the dynamics at play in each context have created opportunities and obligations that have come to define each country's implementation.

Originality/value – The need for a common framework through which scholars can explore comparative HIT systems, while remaining grounded in the US context is an important aspect of effective knowledge translation in adoption.

Diagnostic tests are widely used in many areas of modern technological society, but they are of particular importance in medicine, where early and accurate diagnosis can decrease morbidity and mortality rates of disease. How the quality of diagnostic information and decisions should be measured in a meaningful way has become increasingly important in recent years as an abundance of new diagnostic tests have been introduced. A number of seemingly independent indices are studied for evaluating diagnostic performance such as the receiver operating characteristic curves and signal‐to‐noise ratios. Designing robustness into diagnostic tests can only be achieved by minimizing the variation in the total number of false diagnosis. This article has undertaken a comparison of signal‐to‐noise ratios developed by Taguchi in quality engineering and system performance in manufacturing industry. A hybrid is also computed and its relevance to physicians as an efficient assessment method is proposed and strongly encouraged.