Speaker Profile

Robert Schlaberg

Biography

Robert Schlaberg, MD, Dr. med., MPH is a medical director at ARUP Laboratories, an assistant professor of Pathology at the University of Utah, and a co-founder of IDbyDNA Inc. He completed his Clinical Pathology residency and Master of Public Health training at Columbia University, and a Medical Microbiology fellowship at ARUP Laboratories. His research is focused on next-generation sequencing-based infectious disease diagnostics and is supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has co-developed Taxonomer, an ultrafast, user-friendly, web-based metagenomics data analysis tool with the goal of bringing precision medicine to infectious disease diagnosis. He is board-certified in Clinical Pathology and Medical Microbiology by the American Board of Pathology. He is a member of the College of American Pathologists’ Microbiology Resource Committee and Standard Committee.

Talk

Diagnostic Application of Next-Generation Sequencing Tests for Infectious Diseases
Current tests for infectious disease diagnosis rely on culture, antigen detection, and PCR. They often have low sensitivity, long turn-around-times, or limited scope. As a result, the etiology of many infections remains unknown and patients are treated empirically. This leads to missed opportunities for targeted treatment and overuse of antibiotics. Next-generation sequencing tests enable universal pathogen detection and can overcome many limitations of current infectious disease tests. Diagnostic laboratories face technical and logistical challenges for adopting metagenomics-based NGS tests.