Report Analyzes Trends in Laboratory Automation

The reduction of government reimbursement rates for laboratory tests and managed care cost-restraint measures has increased pressures for clinical labs to become more productive and cost efficient, according to a recent market report. This is a key driver of the USD 10.4-billion-dollar lab automation sector, which includes systems for clinical and drug discovery labs.

However, the need to increase efficiency is hampered by the decreasing number of trained laboratory technologists and the expanding menu of diagnostic testing protocols. Frequently, increased efficiency means increasing or maintaining the timely output of test results with the same number or fewer technologists.

The report, published by healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information (New York, NY, USA), explained that labs are not totally automating. When the trend toward clinical laboratory automation first began, in the early to mid-1990s, it was expected to include all lab functions—total laboratory automation (TLA). Targeted to the largest high volume laboratories, TLA requires a major financial commitment—in the millions—and the space for installing equipment. TLA is neither an affordable nor a practical solution for the majority of small to midsized hospital and other diagnostic laboratories. More recently, the trend for most clinical labs, and for many automation system manufacturers, has been toward modular automation, which includes independent work cells or self-contained workstations, and automation for transport, handling, and pre- and postanalytic processes.

In the US, only about 7% of the laboratories are considered able to benefit from TLA. A 500-bed hospital or smaller, for instance, is not suitable for TLA, unless it has a large outpatient business. A typical midsize to large lab in the US processes up to 3,000 tests per day. But with an aging population and the evolution of personalized medicine and molecular diagnostics, more labs are considering going total, according to the report.

“The best place to automate is at a lab’s preanalytical front end,” said Joe Constance, Kalorama Information analyst and author of the report, “minimizing those non-value-added steps, including such processes as sorting tubes, decapping, centrifugation, loading analyzers. Only a small number of labs are considered suitable for total automation, though each year that number gets larger. Usually, experts believe a laboratory should be performing at least one million to two million tests annually before installing a total system.”

According to Kalorama, labor accounts for more than 60% of the cost of producing test results. Automating a lab increases the available time for value-added steps, the tasks that technologists perform that help make a difference in the quality of the test, such as reviewing critical results.

Kalorama Information supplies independent medical market research in diagnostics, biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and healthcare.

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