Tag: total laboratory automation

Combining Lean with Lab Automation to Get Impressive Results

By Joseph Burns, from the Volume XXII NO. 10 - July 13, 2015 issue

CEO SUMMARY: By combining total lab automation with Lean techniques in a comprehensive makeover of its microbiology lab, one of the largest labs providing hospital acute care and community microbiology services in North America achieved major benefits. Benefits ranged from improvements in lab result turnaround time and reduced errors to significant gains in staff productivity and the quality of lab test results. Productivity improvements allowed the micro lab to absorb a 15% increase in specimen volume while staff levels were reduced by six full-time equivalent MLTs.

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Alan Lloyd, 62, Dies of Cancer, Formerly CIO of Sonic Health

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIX No.15 - October 29, 2012 issue

THIS SUMMER, the global clinical laboratory industry lost a true innovator in medical laboratory management, operations, and informatics. On August 8, 2012, Dr. Alan Lloyd died peacefully at home from pancreatic cancer.

Lloyd was widely-respected for his unique approaches to laboratory operations, lab workflow, and use of informatics to support clinical assessment of laboratory test results.

Much

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New Clinical Lab Trends To Shape Events in 2010

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XVII No. 1 - January 4, 2010 issue

CEO SUMMARY: In presenting this list of macro trends for clinical laboratories, several themes are in play. They range from a continued emphasis on improving lab operations to the need to acquire and deploy sophisticated information technology. During the next few years, the long-predicted retirement of Baby Boomers will kick in. That will aggravate the

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Olympus Diagnostics Unit Sold to Beckman Coulter

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XVI No. 4 - March 16, 2009 issue

CEO SUMMARY: For Beckman Coulter, the opportunity to acquire the diagnostics business of Olympus Corporation was compelling for at least two reasons. One, the chemistry and automation products of both companies are quite complementary. Two, in a steadily-consolidating in vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry, Beckman’s acquisition of the Olympus diagnostics unit was an important strategic response.

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Univ. of Tokyo Hospital Lab Has Plenty of Automation

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XV No. 6 - May 5, 2008 issue

CEO SUMMARY: In Japan, many clinical laboratories are in their third decade of using automation. At the University of Tokyo Hospital, total laboratory automation (TLA) was first implemented in 1991. Now on its fourth generation TLA system, this laboratory was worked upstream to automate specimen collection and urine collection, transport, and specimen preparation. The result

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Lab Automation Advocates Gather in Kobe, Japan

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XV No. 6 - May 5, 2008 issue

CEO SUMMARY: Everything relating to automation in clinical laboratory operations was the theme of the sixth “International Conference of Laboratory Automation and Robotics,” conducted last month in Kobe, Japan. Because laboratories in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have two and three decades of experience with extensive automation, presentations at this gathering are quite sophisticated and reveal

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Key Trends Drive Change for Clinical Laboratories

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIV No. 1 - January 8, 2007 issue

CEO SUMMARY: Technology plays an ever-growing role in reshaping the organization and operation of clinical laboratories. New technologies figure prominently in THE DARK REPORT’S 2007 list of key trends in the clinical laboratory industry. Technological advances in instrument systems, informatics, and molecular diagnostics are giving laboratories new tools to improve clinical services and streamline lab

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Pathologist-Entrepreneurs Offer New Lab Automation

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIII No. 11 - August 14, 2006 issue

CEO SUMMARY: Since October 2003, the core laboratory of Detroit Medical Center University Laboratories has operated with a home-grown total laboratory automation (TLA) system. The 100-foot automated line currently connects to 11 instruments and the hardware cost only $200,000 to build and install. Not only did it allow 20 medical technologists to shift to other

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More Labs Opt to Use and Lab Automation

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIII No. 8 - June 12, 2006 issue

CEO SUMMARY: Many of the nation’s more innovative laboratory organizations are paying closer attention to laboratory productivity and operational performance. To achieve improved operations, these labs are putting three tools to greater use. They are using targeted automation solutions and giving middleware a greater role in the effort to squeeze ever more productivity from every

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Lab Automation Pioneer Assesses Outcomes

By Robert Michel, from the Volume XIII No. 6 - May 1, 2006 issue

CEO SUMMARY: Debate has dogged the subject of laboratory automation since its earliest days. That was true during the early 1990s in Japan. It was true in Canada and the United States throughout the 1990s. It is still true in this decade. That is why it was startling to hear a founding father of clinical

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Volume XXV No. 17 – December 3, 2018

DID CONGRESS JUST PASS A LAW that makes innocent labs guilty of criminal acts? At the last minute, Congress added all clinical laboratories to a far-reaching anti-kickback provision in the newly-enacted Support for Patients and Communities Act -- a provision that makes common practices such as paying commissions to sales staff or placing phlebotomists in labs could be illegal. Worse: The experts are baffled by the language of the new law. Notes one of these experts in this issue, "Someone in the clinical lab industry may have to get prosecuted before we get some clarity, unless the Secretary of HHS issues clarifying regulations."

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Tag: total laboratory automation

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