Can Definitive Drug Screening Become Routine? Automation and Data Management Challenges

While definitive LC-MS/MS methods are well established in confirmatory testing protocols, drug screening is still performed by presumptive methods in many areas of clinical and forensic toxicology.  
An earlier webinar compared presumptive and definitive screening method outcomes and showed evidence of enhanced drug selectivity and detection rates along with significant reduction in both false positive and negative test results using definitive methods of screening.

  
Conversion to definitive methods of drug screening with expanded drug panels is clearly needed but the challenges of high-volume screening with mass spectrometry technology has slowed the transition to definitive screening across the toxicology sub-specialty areas.

 The hurdles on the way to definitive screening include automated sample preparation, rapid chromatography separation, analyte-specific matrix normalization, large data-set management, alternative confirmatory methodology and economic/regulatory considerations. 

This webinar will focus on navigating these hurdles and on one laboratory’s experience with conversion to definitive screening and confirmation protocols in clinical and forensic practice.

 

 

Learning Objectives