Major technological advances affecting clinical and diagnostic immunology.

Abstract

There have been many important technological advances in the field of immunology over the last 200 years, but the rate of introduction of new technology, particularly new methods involving sophisticated instrumentation, has increased rapidly in recent years. Prepackaged systems, computer analysis, and electronic reporting, as well as greatly expanded basic and clinical knowledge of immunology and immunological diseases, are changing our approaches to clinical and diagnostic immunology. In addition, the constraints of increasingly limited budgets in the health care system have forced us to reconsider our selection of laboratory tests and methods. In this paper, I will review a few of the important historic findings which advanced the field of clinical and diagnostic immunology as it relates to virology and then discuss some of the more recent important changes in technology, particularly since the 1960s, that are affecting the field today. Last, I will consider some of the future changes which should be in place by the turn of the century. (Adapted from the Abbott Laboratories Award Lecture in Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology, 96th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, 20 May 1996, New Orleans, La.)