LabNotes - Volume 14, No.2, 2004

Related Industry Website: What is AACC?

www.aacc.org

The American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc. (AACC) is an international scientific/medical society of clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists and other individuals involved in clinical chemistry and other clinical laboratory science-related disciplines. Founded in 1948, the society has 10,000 members and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Clinical chemistry is the use of chemical processes in a clinical laboratory setting to evaluate patient health. It is one of several specialties - such as microbiology, pathology, molecular biology or hematology - practiced in the clinical laboratory. Most AACC members direct laboratories analyze body fluid samples, such as blood or urine, or samples of DNA, to gain information to help physicians diagnose or monitor a patient's state of health or disease or monitor treatment. Increasingly, lab testing is being used to detect predisposition to a disease, or to find a disease presymptomatically so treatment can begin much earlier.

AACC members come from a variety of employment settings: hospital laboratories 50%; industry, 26%; and independent laboratories, 24%. AACC members can be found in more than 100 countires; 30% of membership is from outside of the USA.

AACC publications include:

• Clinical Chemistry, an international journal of laboratory medicine and molecular diagnostics
• Clinical Laboratory News, an authoritative source for timely analysis of issues and trends affecting clinical laboratorians
• Clinical Laboratory Strategies, a concise monthly newsletter for clinical laboratory directors and managers that provides administrators with news when they need it to help manage their laboratories more effectively

AACC is also the sponsor of the annual AACC Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo, which is the largest dedicated conference and exhibition of equipment, instruments and services for clinical laboratories in the world.

For detailed information about AACC, visit their website.

Return to top