The pipette is a key tool in the lab. The typical lab technician spends an average of 500 hours per year undertaking pipetting activities. This equates to approximately 2 hours per day. It is a little wonder therefore that lab…
The benefits of lab automation have and continue to be shared. There is plenty of justification to do so and a lot of work behind it to verify the benefits accordingly. At the same time though, it’s important to consider…
The financial cost of lab errors has been estimated at $180,000 per annum. Two-thirds of all medical decisions rely on lab testing. Subsequently, errors can cause delays in diagnosis and treatment as well as patients receiving incorrect treatments. Mitigating against…
DNA analysis is a cornerstone component of modern forensic science. The United States Department of Justice defines forensic science as a "critical element of the criminal justice system." In recent years, the power of DNA has been harnessed to generate…
A lot is said about nucleic acid extraction and rightly so. It is defined as the “first step of any amplification experiment, no matter what the amplification is used to detect a specific pathogen.” An article by JH Shin in…
Cross-contamination is routinely spoken about across labs and can be a massive headache waiting to happen. To start off, it’s important to define it. Simply put, cross-contamination is defined as an unintentional transfer of an unwanted impurity from one sample…
Laboratory automation was defined by Robin Felder back in 1998 as “any device, software or process that improves the efficiency of the laboratory.” Since then, there have been some adjustments to that definition to include liquid handlers, robotics and various…
With 13 billion laboratory tests conducted on an annual basis combined with two-thirds of all medical decisions made by doctors supported by lab testing, it is clear as to why the equipment in your lab must always work at optimal…
Discover an easy-to-use, time-saving solution for labs What is a nucleic acid extractor? A nucleic acid extractor is an automated solution to a time-consuming, error-prone manual workflow. It helps prevent errors, and cross-contamination, and can process 48 to 96 samples…
The shortage of qualified lab technicians is nothing new.In 2015, Kimberly Scott highlighted the laboratory workforce shortage and the demand for new responses to resolve the shortfall. Now, nearly a decade later, in the wake of the pandemic, "the longtime…