Medical technology is the profession responsible for testing blood and bodily fluids. The results of these tests are used by physicians in diagnosing and treating disease, maintaining health, drug monitoring, organ transplantation, forensic medicine and more.
Medical technology combines the challenges and rewards of medicine and science.
Medical technologists, or med techs as often referred, are vital members of the health care team. They must work accurately and quickly to detect the changes in biologic specimens that determine the absence, presence, extent, and causes of disease. In the early days of clinical laboratory science, pathologists, who were just beginning to receive recognition as necessary and important medical specialists in their own right, performed their own laboratory tests. As the field of laboratory medicine developed and broadened, pathologists found it necessary to train assistants to help perform the simpler tests. The profession of medical technology thus came into being in the early part of this century.