Gary Smith, PhD, Hired to Lead Advanced Diagnostics Laboratories

With more than a decade of experience in reference laboratory leadership, Gary L. Smith, PhD, joins National Jewish Health as Executive Director of the Advanced Diagnostics Laboratories (ADx). The Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory at National Jewish Health is the premiere esoteric lab in respiratory, immune and related diseases. Dr. Smith will aggressively lead the effort to expand business for the laboratories as part of the National Jewish Health ten-year strategic plan.

"The Advanced Diagnostics Laboratories take advantage of unique expertise available at National Jewish Health to offer many services available nowhere else in the world, including complex immunologic, respiratory, complement, pharmacokinetic and mycobacteriological assays," said David Tinkelman, MD, Vice President of Health Initiatives at National Jewish. "Adding Dr. Smith's leadership is essential to the growth and development of the Advanced Diagnostic Laboratories, and will allow us to market specialized diagnostic tests to larger audiences."

Dr. Smith spent the previous fourteen years at Laboratory Corporation of America , and most recently served as its Senior Vice President, Managed Care, Western Operations. He also served as Senior Vice President of Operations, Midwest Division for eight years. In that role, Dr. Smith led a division that generated nearly $600 million in sales and employed 3,200 people covering 15 states including Colorado. He has a PhD in analytical chemistry.

"We have already created strategic alliances with several partners, including Roche Diagnostics, LabCorp and Phadia," said Dr. Smith. "We are positioning ourselves to experience significant growth in our commercial reference testing segment, especially in the molecular diagnostic arena.  Likewise, the other major component of growth over the next three to five years is in our pharmaceutical/contract research organization (CRO) business segment.  This area is driven by our bio marker research coupled with both our immune monitoring and complement expertise."

National Jewish Health is known worldwide for treatment of patients with respiratory, immune and related disorders, and for groundbreaking medical research. For 11 consecutive years, U.S. News & World Report has ranked National Jewish the No. 1 respiratory hospital in the nation. National Jewish's Advanced Diagnostics Lab is the nation's leading immunology reference lab, featuring a comprehensive menu of respiratory, molecular, and companion diagnostic tests.