Today we’d like to introduce you to Syed Haque.
Syed, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Back in 2015, I was approached by a friend who wanted to set up their own Clinical Laboratory. A Clinical Laboratory is a highly regulated business governed by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Food and Drug Administration and states are all involved. I helped this friend of mine with setting up of the laboratory and ensuring ongoing quality laboratory results. This is when I decided to start a consulting company to solve the problems faced by small clinical Laboratories startups. There are plenty of opportunities for businesses to start their own clinical laboratories. They can start a laboratory to provide testing for bio-markers or for controlled drugs or can offer direct to consumer testing in states that allow it. Clinical Labs are inspected by regulators and are required to correct deficiency. Clinical Labs, big or small, previously passing inspection or not, get sanctioned if they do not correct deficiency and are not CLIA-compliant. The billion-dollar Theranos laboratory of Elizabeth Holmes is a well known example of such a laboratory that got sanctioned. Starting a clinical lab poses a lot of challenges and our consulting company helps mitigate some of them.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As with any consulting businesses, there had been several challenges. Raising awareness among potential lab owners about what we do and how we ensure accuracy and reliability of lab results on an ongoing basis is one of them. There are lab owners who believe if you pass the inspection, your results are great. Theranos lab had passed inspection before the regulators finally caught up with them. Passing CMS inspection is just one aspect of laboratory management. A lab owner should hire a good consulting company run by a team of experienced, trained laboratory professionals. Our services in setting up a laboratory and providing ongoing technical review and direction come at a low cost but better quality compared to others.
Please tell us about American Laboratory Consultant.
American Laboratory Consultant provides services that help anyone start a clinical laboratory in the field of Clinical Chemistry, Hematology, Toxicology or Molecular diagnostics. Our team works with our client to prepare the site, get them the right analyzer and reagents, develop methods where needed, perform method validation, process all regulatory application, and provide ongoing technical direction, reviews, and remediation for a smooth functioning of a high quality, CLIA-compliant clinical laboratory. Other consulting companies are not as actively involved with the laboratories as we are. We provide more frequent and as needed on-site visits to our client’s laboratory and at a reasonable price.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I do not think I would have done anything differently. If I had some investors, things could have moved much faster and I could have capitalized on additional laboratory business opportunities that came up.
Contact Info:
- Address: 350 S Northwest Highway, Suite 300Park Ridge, IL 60068
- Website: www.starturlab.com
- Phone: (847) 656-5374
- Email: syed.haque@starturlab.com
- Other: https://optimalabinc.com/
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