2023-12-14 12:02:35
If many hospitals have already integrated automation into their laboratories, particularly with regard to the analysis of samples, the Saint-Luc de Bouge clinic announces that it has also automated the pre- and post-analytical parts and thus achieved a chain fully automated, from receipt of a sample to its storage, which constitutes a first in French-speaking Belgium.
This development is first materialized by a conveyor belt which now crosses the laboratory secretariat and winds continuously between the employee offices. Once the samples have been received and coded, the tubes are simply placed on the belt which will transport them to the various analysis machines located in the heart of the laboratory.
“Previously, one person had to go through each encoding station to collect all these samples by hand” explains Marc Elsen, the laboratory director, “It took significantly longer! Especially since each technician did not come continuously. Now, the tubes are almost instantly placed on the distribution racks.”
The time saving would be 20% on average over the total duration of a standard analysis, or around 12 minutes. The laboratory would thus be able to provide results in less than an hour for a large majority of analysis requests.
Faster and more efficient
Once the analyzes have been carried out, it is still necessary to store the sample and, above all, to be able to find it easily in the event of additional analysis. Here again, mechatronics intervenes to make the task easier for staff. At the very end of the chain, a mechanical arm grabs each tube and assigns it a specific place in a fridge, among 27,000 other samples.
“The IT knows exactly what type of tube, what number and what patient it was intended for and will be able to search for it if necessary” rejoices Marc Elsen, “All this allows for much more standardized and smoother processing. Traceability is now almost complete since it is IT that manages the life of the tube in our lab.“.
Above all, these technological solutions free staff from certain restrictive tasks and allow them to concentrate on their real core business, analyzing results. It’s more comfortable, less stressful, it also reduces the risk of human errors and it gives us more time to validate the results.” a laboratory technologist tells us, “before, it was more tedious, you had to move around, not forget the reference, it was a waste of time and energy above all.”
“It is also about preparing the laboratory for future challenges.” explains Marc Elsen, “We know well that in the next five or ten years, health care in general, hospital infrastructures will probably have to operate more and more in a network, trying to save resources. We are ready to play an important role in the loco-regional clinical biology of tomorrow.”
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