Tag: total laboratory automation

Combining Lean with Lab Automation to Get Impressive Results

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lean techniques image technician in lab

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

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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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Olympus Diagnostics Unit Sold to Beckman Coulter

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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

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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

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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

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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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More Labs Opt to Use and Lab Automation

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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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