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Making the Most of Clinical Laboratory Automation:
Achieving Best Practices with Total Laboratory Automation in Your Laboratory
By: John Crissman, MD Chief Executive Officer Integrated Laboratory Automation Solutions, Inc. Editor: John Crissman, MD

DARK Daily Laboratory and Pathology News @ darkdaily.com

Making the Most of Clinical Laboratory Automation: Achieving Best Practices withTotal Laboratory Audio in Your Laboratory

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Table of Contents
Introduction Chapter 1. Continuous Flow Automation Chapter 2. Pre-Analytical and Post Analytical Chapter 3. Planning For The Automated Laboratory Chapter 4. Open versus Closed Continuous Automation Systems Chapter 5. Determine Return On Investment Summary A Case Study of iLAS’ System at Work Appendices A-1 About Jon Crissman, MDA-2 About DARK Daily A-3 About The Dark Intelligence Group, Inc., and The Dark reporT A-4 About the Executive War College on Laboratory and Pathology Management Terms of Use 26 27 28 29 32 3 6 8 12 15 18 19 20

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Making the Most of Clinical Laboratory Automation: Achieving Best Practices with Total Laboratory Audio inYour Laboratory

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Introduction
Evolution of the clinical pathology laboratory has been one long progression of advances in technology. These improvements have transformed pathology and laboratory medicine from the manual performance of individual chemistries or hematology tests to sophisticated diagnostic analyzers that perform multiple laboratory tests in an automated format. This reviewdiscusses the methods currently available to improve medical laboratory process efficiencies. It ends with discussion of the merits of “closed” versus “open” total laboratory automation applications. Development of Laboratory Information Systems The development of laboratory automation systems (LAS) would not be possible without sophisticated laboratory information systems (LIS). One must remember,LIS was one of the first applications of information technology applications that changed the practice of clinical laboratory medicine as we know it today. As a result, the development of LIS and the centralization of clinical laboratories led to the high volume of specimens many medical laboratories experience daily. These improvement in LIS, along with developments in analyzer technologyresulted in the complex, multifunction diagnostic instruments that currently populate clinical laboratories. Without sophisticated LIS, the lab test data imported and exported from these complex laboratory analyzers would be impossible to manage. The organization of the flow of patient specimens into the laboratory, the preparation of specimens for testing and the flow of specimens to chemistry andhematological analyzers is the subject of this review.

One must remember, LIS was one of the first applications of information technology applications that changed the practice of clinical laboratory medicine as we know it today.

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Laboratory Automation Two major methods of transporting patient specimens within the laboratory have evolved. The first is the manual transport of specimens, usually in racks of multiple specimens (batch transfer) to individual analyzers where the tubes are automatically sampled and processed by the analyzer. This is essentially an extension from thetraditional method of transporting single samples to testing instruments to racks of multiple patient samples. The second method is the continuous feed of single specimens by conveyor to a variety of analyzers (continuous flow) in which sequential sampling and testing of patient specimens in different and separate analyzers occur. Batch Laboratory Automation For the most part, batch testing remains...