Robots in the clinical laboratory

The recent availability of robots specifically designed for use in laboratories raises the question 'Is there a place for robots in clinical chemistry laboratories?' Some direct experience with the Zymark robot over the last 18 months suggests that the answer to this question is equivocal and it is my intention to elaborate on this lheme. Over the last 15 to 20 years there has been a steady increase in the use of automatic instruments in clinical chemistry laboratories, partly due to market exploitation by the instrument manufacturers and partly due to the greater clinical demand for diagnostic tests. The clinical demand is such that a fairly large laboratory might be handling around 125 000 to 150 000 samples per year, representing about 2 million test results. The range of tests offered might be of 100 different types. Changes in workload arise from two sources; firstly from a general increase in established tests which is usually absorbed onto existing automatic equipment; and, secondly, from the addition of new tests to the laboratory repertoire. These are often complex in nature and, initially at least, are carried out in relatively small numbers. It is here where the use of robotic preparation units would have its greatest benefit and effect. Figure shows the probable relationship between manual, robotic and dedicated instrumentation. As the complexity of a particular task increases, then the relative number of samples which can be handled by a human operator diminishes. Equally, as the complexity goes down, then the human operator can carry out more tasks of a repetitive nature. In the figure an arbitrary point of about 20 samples would define the point at which one could reasonably expect to carry out this analytical work on dedicated instrumentation. However, before instrument manufacturers will commission the manufacture of new automatic instruments they have to identify a market of sufficient size and consequently there is always an intermediate period during which the analytical laboratories find difficulty in meeting the clinical demands, it is here that the robot could have a major place. It is worthwhile to examine the workload of a clinical laboratory and the operations necessary to complete that workload in order to identify areas of robotic application. The workload breakdown in the authors' laboratory is shown in table 1. Fully automated analyses are considered to be those which only require sample presentation to the equipment and in which a printed …