The history of the department began in 1911, when the Laboratory of clinical microscopy was established in the Institute. The restructurization in 1926 lead to the formation of the Laboratory department, which united bacteriological, pathomorphological and clinical laboratories. In the period from 1926 to 1971 clinical and diagnostic studies were supervised by Prof. Yelenevskyi K., Svetlova M. DSc, and Petrenko O. DSc Fundamental studies, carried out in the department, were organized by such well-known scientists, as Prof. Bilous A., Prof. Tymoshenko O., Delevskyi Yu DSc.

In 1992, after association of clinical-microscopic, clinical-bacteriological and clinical-biochemical groups, the Scientific laboratory of clinical diagnostics has been established. In 1998, a clinical immunology team was incorporated into this unit. Dr. Leontieva F. became the head of the laboratory.

In 2000, the Institute was reassigned from the Ministry of Health system to the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (NAMSU), and the laboratory has received the status of the Department of laboratory diagnostics and immunology.

At present day, the Department is responsible for organizing and conducting rounds of inter-laboratory comparisons of instrumental measurements at the NAMSU institutions in Kharkiv. In November 2015, the department successfully passed the NAMSU program for inter-laboratory comparisons of instrumental measurements. In 2019, it received a certificate of conformity of the measurement system to the requirements of Ukrainian state standard ISO 10012: 2005.

The department participates the International programs for the quality control of clinical and laboratory studies.

The Department provides a number of unique biochemical methods, developed at the Institute to analyze the physiological state of the connective tissue. To understand the peculiarities of the metabolism of the connective tissue in various orthopedic diseases the our staff uses the diagnostic schemes, developed in the Department. Another important topic of our studies is the somatic status of orthopedic patients with comorbidic cardiovascular, endocrine and other pathologies. Changes in concentration of biochemical, immunological and hematological markers, and the number coagulogram parameters are also studied in the Department. In general, we use 201 methods to study human biological fluids, including joint punctures, exudates, and transudates.

The basic areas of the department activity are:

• study of metabolism of the connective tissue;
• study of immune status during pathological processes in the musculoskeletal system;
• development of diagnostic algorithms for dystrophic, inflammatory, traumatic, oncological and other diseases of musculoskeletal system;
• investigation of changes in the blood clotting system associated with diseases and injuries of musculoskeletal system.