Laboratory Equipment
Laboratory equipment for clinical labs and pathology groups includes a wide range of devices and instruments, some of which are familiar to the general public and some of which are highly specialized to clinical lab work.
Laboratory equipment is generally used to either perform an experiment or to take measurements and gather data. Larger or more sophisticated equipment is generally called a scientific instrument.
Such equipment includes test tubes, Folin-Wu tubes for blood glucose determination, petri dishes, beakers, flasks, Pasteur pipettes, glass slides, syringes and needles, autoclave, disposable gloves, tourniquets, microscopes, Bunsen burners, ultracentrifuge, electrophoresis apparatus, chromatography system, hematology analyzer, chemistry analyzer, semiauto analyzer, reflotron, setup for radioimmunoassay, setup for enzyme linked immunosorbant assay, (ELISA, colorimeter, burette, induction coils, cathode ray oscilloscope, recording kymograph and surface plasmon resonance equipment and various reagents.)
Other laboratory equipment might include a skin analyzer, oxygen analyzer, flouresence microscope, spectrum analyzer, and a digital pathology scanner, among many others.
At the same time, technology is advancing to the point where the capabilities of an entire laboratory can now be contained in relatively small devices. One relatively new device the size of a cola can is paired with a smartphone and can diagnose diseases like a clinical laboratory.
Another such device, marketed largely to developing countries that lack a well-developed network of clinical laboratories, is a credit-card-size anthrax detector that also works like a portable medical laboratory in the field.
In addition, research organizations, including one in the United States, one in New Zealand, and two in the U.K., have unveiled several devices that will analyze DNA in the field. Again, this line of research is of particular interest in developing countries where resources such as electricity for refrigeration are scarce. Some of the DNA testing devices will produce results in minutes to hours, eliminating the need to return to a clinical laboratory to analyze samples.
Ranging in size from little more than a pack of gum to about the size of a large brick, these devices for DNA analysis have the potential to serve as mobile medical laboratories for pathologists in the field.
Labs Have Opportunity to ID Sepsis Much Faster
CEO SUMMARY: In the Northeast, the microbiology department of a four-hospital health system adopted new technology for testing patients suspected of sepsis. Not only did this microbiology lab shorten the time-to-detection, it increased the diagnosis rate for sepsis from 9% to 15%—an imp…
Mass Spectrometry Is Finding Larger Role in Clinical Labs
CEO SUMMARY: Mass spectrometry is a diagnostic technology that is transforming clinical labs and improving care at a rapid pace. The current generation of instruments is capable of supporting a faster time-to-answer and provides improved accuracy and specificity over many existing methods…
Lab Specimen Transport Eliminates Need for Ice
CEO SUMMARY: Because of its unique design and reliability, a new product for transporting laboratory specimens and units of blood without the use of ice and dry ice is gaining favor with innovative laboratories across the country. Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States uses this ice…
Root Cause Analysis Used To Find Source of Errors
CEO SUMMARY: It is a reminder that today’s sophisticated laboratory test systems still have the potential to malfunction in unexpected ways. This spring, following installation and validation of a new chemistry instrument, one Canadian hospital laboratory quickly recognized that a serie…
Personalized Medicine: Meet Pathologists’ New Competitors
IF THERE IS ANY SINGLE “NEXT BIG THING” that will truly revolutionize healthcare, it is likely to be personalized medicine. This approach promises to deliver improved outcomes to individual patients, while helping to control—or even reduce—the cost of care. Central to personalized medicine w…
Putting Centrifuges Into Courier Cars For Mobile Processing
CEO SUMMARY: To improve the quality of lab services it provides to more than 300 skilled nursing facilities (SNF) while reducing costs, MuirLab of Concord, California, has created a “mobile specimen processing” solution. It operates a fleet of courier cars with centr…
More Hospitals Now Use Point-of-Care Test Devices
CEO SUMMARY: Point-of-care testing (POCT) continues to gain acceptance in hospitals across the nation. One factor in this trend is improved technology for both the POC assays and the POC systems, each of which contributes to a more accurate and reproducible POC test result. But a…
Healthcare Has First Standards for Use of Bar Codes and RFID
THREE ORGANIZATIONS have jointly developed information technology standards to be used in identifying patients, drugs, and medical devices. These standards use bar code, radio frequency identification (RFID), and two-dimensional symbol technologies. The American National Standards Institute …
Cell Phones to be Used to Report Patient Self-Test Results
HOW ABOUT USING A CELL PHONE to monitor patient in-home laboratory test results? That’s about to happen with a new program introduced by CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland. CareFirst will test whether monitoring devices in cell phones can help patients with diabetes mana…
Mayo Rolls Out RFID after only 5-Month Test
CEO SUMMARY: After running a test project for less than six months, The Mayo Clinic is preparing to expand its use of RFID tags and scanners, focusing on endoscopy specimens. By expanding the use of RFID, Mayo will implement the technology in 41 operating rooms, providing care to more tha…
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Volume XXXII, No. 6 – April 21, 2025
Now that a federal judge has vacated the FDA’s LDT rule, The Dark Report analyzes the judgement and notes the various steps the FDA could take in response. Also, lab testing at pharmacies is proving to be less successful than was once anticipated.
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