Initial investment may reach millions of dollars, and floor space requirements may exceed 4000 square feet. The major limitations of TLA include the need for substantial financial investment and increased floor space. Staff savings from automated testing can be reassigned to other areas or projects, such as increasing the frequency of testing for tests currently run on a limited schedule or implementing new tests in-house that were previously sent to a reference laboratory. Laboratories using a high degree of automation thus have the ability to introduce new assays and/or process additional testing volume without adding staff. The latter is of special interest given the current shortage of laboratory technologists. TLA benefits include a decrease in labeling and other preanalytic errors, shorter turnaround times, and a reduction in full-time equivalents (FTEs) necessary to process a given test volume-that is, increased productivity. TLA can include a wide variety of modules, including analytic units to perform chemistry, hematology, coagulation, and immunochemistry tests, as well as preanalytic/postanalytic units such as centrifuges, specimen sorting modules, specimen decappers and recappers, specimen aliquot modules, and refrigerated storage units ( Fig. These systems are typically designed for laboratories that process 1000 to 10,000 or more samples per day-for example, a core laboratory within a health system’s network of laboratories.
History of automation in the clinical lab software#
In a TLA design, multiple analyzers are coupled to a specimen management and transportation system process control software (middleware) coordinates the activities of the various automation modules ( Box 6.4) and is interfaced to the LIS. Continued research and modifications to these earlier systems led to the development of commercial TLA systems designed for hospital-based laboratories.
Each laboratory workstation was coupled to the conveyor belts so that the samples could be moved from one workstation to another.
Early designs used one-arm robots, conveyor belts, and modifications to existing chemistry analyzers to perform as many preanalytic and analytic tasks as possible with no human intervention ( Olsen, 2012). The idea of totally automating a clinical laboratory has its roots in Japan, and the concept was first introduced in the early 1980s. McPherson MD, MSc, in Henry's Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods, 2022 Total Laboratory Automation