Survey on Clinical Laboratory Testing in Europe

A new market survey of clinical laboratory testing covers five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK). The survey (The 2001 European Environment for Clinical Laboratory Testing: Clinical Chemistry, Protein Chemistry, and Immunoassay Systems and Customers' Needs) was conducted and authored by Glover Leonard & Redshaw (Brussels, Belgium).

The survey includes information on the placement of more than 65,000 analzyers and details current marketplace practices and trends, based on interviews with about 150 laboratory customers and 150 suppliers, subsidiaries, and distributers in the five countries. One important conclusion is that consolidation is moving at a slow pace. Despite the much-publicized trend in its direction and the stated desire of customers to use fewer, bigger, and more-automated analyzers, the actual number of hospitals and laboratories making routine clinical chemistry tests and the number of systems used has not changed much since 1998, say the authors.

However, the number of locations making immunoassays, special protein assays, and other less-commonly performed tests has decreased somewhat. Some clinical departments in university hospitals with a satellite laboratory may have passed their immunoassays and other specialist tests to the central or biochemistry lab. The trend to consolidate emergency/stat tests onto routine analyzers continues. Putting routine protein assays onto mainframes is also important.

Roughly 33% of all drug testing is now made on clinical chemistry systems. The number of labs performing routine testing is somewhat smaller and their activities have been reduced to covering near-patient tests, resulting in the need for small hand-held devices for cardiac disease testing and coagulation and blood glucose monitoring. For security, some labs prefer two identical medium-size analyzers rather than one very large system. A modular system, fed with racks, will be the preferred analyzer format for tomorrow. This allows bigger labs to consider pre-analytical automation and even eventual total laboratory automation.

As the result of mounting cost pressures, a decline in qualified technicians, and an increase in information technology that allows paperless reporting of results, medium-to-large labs will move to more automation in the future, with more consolidation of test categories as allowed by system menus. Central and core laboratories are becoming more popular. Reliability and high quality of after-sales services are increasingly important keys to success. Strategic alliances may also become more important, as multinational companies attempt to offer complete packages of reagents, systems, and services.