Mobile Testing Lab

BY ADRIANA ROSATO, MSC; PHD

Riverside University Health System - Medical Center opened the innovative Mobile Lab that elevated their level of COVID-19 patient care and paved the way for future innovative treatments for cancer, infectious diseases and genetic diseases.

The inception of the modernized Mobile Lab in the Summer of 2020 allowed for rapid COVID-19 testing that helped support staff and patient testing. This ensured continued care at the hospital during these unprecedented times. The institution relied heavily on the Mobile Lab molecular testing to make informed care decisions. Outfitted with both negative and positive pressure capabilities, it yielded gold standard testing.

The testing conducted helped determine how many viral particles a patient has and when the disease is starting to resolve. These insights were pivotal in management decisions; for example, infectious disease specialist, Bruce Weng, DO, has been able to rely on the lab’s results to make important decisions, such as when to discharge a patient or deciding to de-isolate a patient. Currently, the mobile lab has been able to expand the current COVID-19 molecular testing to identify the new B1.1.7 COVID-19 mutated UK variant. This initiative will have important patient management and epidemiological implications.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, RUHS expects to transition the Mobile Lab services to collaborate with additional hospitals and communities. The lab will upgrade the molecular testing to other fields such as cancer and genetic diseases, to provide crucial diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic information to patients and physicians. The plans are to be able

“Being so involved in the COVID pandemic has been an amazing personal experience”

- Dr. Adriana Rosato

to perform tests on many different types of clinical specimens (blood, body fluids, biopsy tissue, etc.) to detect DNA markers that serve as signatures that help healthcare workers provide optimal care.

The lab is overseen by microbiologist and molecular biologist, Adriana Rosato, MSc; PhD, who was the director of a laboratory of clinical and basic research at the Department of Pathology and Infectious Diseases at Houston Methodist Hospital. Her infectious disease experience began in 1998, where she studied Tuberculosis and its resistance to antimicrobials at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles was followed by 23 years of extensive research on Gram positive methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) infections.

Mobile Testing Lab equipment

Dr. Rosato and Mobile Testing Lab colleague Lab equipment