Talk:Michael Laposata

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Thanks for adding this biography for Laposata. I think that they do reach WP:NACADEMIC, although their high H-factor is mostly generated by a high number of mid-author contributions. The page has been tagged with some improvement templates, mostly related to sourcing, that have some suggested improvements.

Klbrain (talk) 19:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

COI edit request: proposed update to article

Disclosure: I am Michael Laposata, the subject of this article. Per WP:COI, I am not editing the article directly and am asking an independent editor to review the proposed text below.

Request: Replace the current article text with the version below. It keeps the existing child abuse coverage and sources (ProPublica, PBS Frontline, NPR), adds cited material on my career, the 2015 Institute of Medicine committee on diagnostic error, the AMP v. FDA laboratory developed tests case, and awards, and marks the lines that still need a source with {{citation needed}}. Section headings are shown in bold here so they do not break this talk thread. Please remove anything you judge insufficiently sourced or not neutral. Thank you.

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Michael Laposata is an American pathologist, biochemist and specialist in blood coagulation. He was chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston and earlier directed clinical laboratories at Massachusetts General Hospital and Vanderbilt University. He is known for developing diagnostic management teams, for his work on bleeding disorders misdiagnosed as child abuse, and as a plaintiff in the 2024 lawsuit that overturned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rule on laboratory developed tests.

Education Laposata received a Bachelor of Science in biology from Bucknell University in 1974. He earned both an MD and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then completed postdoctoral research and a residency in clinical pathology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Career Laposata joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he was co-director of the hemostasis laboratory at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He then spent 19 years as Director of Clinical Laboratories at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was also on the faculty of Harvard Medical School.

He moved to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and served as director of clinical laboratories at Vanderbilt University Hospital. He later joined the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston as professor and chair of the Department of Pathology, and directed UTMB's MD-PhD program.

At all three institutions he built diagnostic management teams, which give ordering physicians an expert's interpretation of complex laboratory results, with recommended next steps. He organized three national conferences on forming diagnostic management teams.

Research and contributions Laposata is the author of Laposata's Laboratory Medicine: Diagnosis of Disease in the Clinical Laboratory (McGraw Hill), now in its fourth edition. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers.

For more than two decades he studied bleeding and clotting disorders that can be mistaken for signs of child abuse. In 2005 he co-published a study on diseases that can cause bleeding, including von Willebrand disease, vitamin K deficiency, leukemia, immune thrombocytopenic purpura and Henoch–Schönlein purpura. According to Laposata, bruising caused by disease can be hard to distinguish from abuse, and a misdiagnosis can lead to caregivers being wrongly imprisoned.

He designed the curriculum for a doctorate in clinical laboratory science.

Policy and advocacy Laposata served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Diagnostic Error in Health Care, which produced the 2015 report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care.

In August 2024 he joined the Association for Molecular Pathology as a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the FDA's final rule on regulating laboratory developed tests. In 2025 a federal district court in Texas vacated the rule. The same year, the Association for Molecular Pathology gave him its Champion for Innovation Award for his role in the case.

Awards and recognition

• 14 teaching awards from Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
• Recognized by The Pathologist as the most influential pathologist in the United States
• Inducted into the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine Hall of Fame
• Champion for Innovation Award, Association for Molecular Pathology, 2025

Selected works

• Laposata's Laboratory Medicine: Diagnosis of Disease in the Clinical Laboratory, 4th ed. McGraw Hill.

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References

Milaposa (talk) 19:36, 27 September 2026 (UTC) Displaying laposata_talk_edit_request.txt.