The Department of Laboratory Medicine is devoted to the study of the molecular and cellular constituents of blood and other body fluids for the diagnosis and management of illness and for the investigation of the mechanisms and pathogenesis of disease. The Department carries out its patient care mission by assuming responsibility for the clinical laboratories; its faculty conduct both basic and applied research, and offer major teaching programs at the medical student and post graduate level.

The Department provides clinical laboratory testing for Yale-New Haven Medical Center. It also serves as a regional reference laboratory for New England, and as a national reference laboratory for various advanced diagnostic assays. Approximately five million tests are performed each year. Committed to providing a broad array of state-of-the-art, cost-effective testing, Laboratory Medicine faculty regularly translate developing technology into routine practice, both as new tests and as better versions of existing tests.

Teaching is a major emphasis. Clinical Pathology residency training is provided for residents in straight Laboratory Medicine and as part of an integrated anatomic and clinical pathology residency training program in cooperation with the Department of Pathology. The programs are recognized as among the best in the country, and their graduates are highly successful in both academic and clinical practice. Excellent subspecialty fellowship training in Transfusion Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Hematopathology is also provided. The Department teaches two major required courses in the Medical School, Medical Microbiology and Introduction to Laboratory Medicine, as well as a fourth year elective in Laboratory Medicine and the Laboratory Medicine teaching within the Core Medicine Clerkship. In the fifteen years since its inception, Laboratory Medicine faculty have won the Bohmfalk Award on five occasions, an honor bestowed annually by the medical student body to the most outstanding teacher.

Faculty research interests span a broad range and include molecular virology and immunology, stem cell biology, cellular adhesion, the hemostasis-inflammation interface, clinical pharmacology and toxicology, tropical medicine, microbial pathogenesis, molecular diagnostics, structural biology, and biomedical engineering. In addition to the training of graduate and post-doctoral students in individual laboratories, the Department carries out post-doctoral research training of MDs, MD/PhDs and PhDs under the auspices of a special NIH sponsored program for "Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine" with participating faculty from both Laboratory Medicine and a number of other basic science and bridge departments. The Department also houses the NIH-sponsored Yale Center of Excellence in Molecular Hematology and offers Core Laboratory Facilities within the Cancer Center for Immune Monitoring and Cell Therapy.