Laboratory automation
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Laboratory automation is a multi-disciplinary strategy to research, develop, optimize and capitalize on technologies in the laboratory that enable new and improved processes. Laboratory automation professionals are academic, commercial and government researchers, scientists and engineers who conduct research and develop new technologies to increase productivity, elevate experimental data quality, reduce lab process cycle times, or enable experimentation that otherwise would be impossible.
The most widely known application of laboratory automation technology is
The application of technology in today's laboratories is required to achieve timely progress and remain competitive. Laboratories devoted to activities such as
History
At least since 1875 there have been reports of automated devices for scientific investigation.[1] These first devices were mostly built by scientists themselves in order to solve problems in the laboratory. After the second world war, companies started to provide automated equipment with greater and greater complexity.
Automation steadily spread in laboratories through the 20th century, but then a revolution took place: in the early 1980s, the first fully automated laboratory was opened by
Despite the success of Dr. Sasaki laboratory and others of the kind, the multi-million dollar cost of such laboratories has prevented adoption by smaller groups.[8] This is all more difficult because devices made by different manufactures often cannot communicate with each other. However, recent advances based on the use of scripting languages like Autoit have made possible the integration of equipment from different manufacturers.[9] Using this approach, many low-cost electronic devices, including open-source devices,[10] become compatible with common laboratory instruments.
Some startups such as Emerald Cloud Lab and Strateos provide on-demand and remote laboratory access on a commercial scale. A 2017 study indicates that these commercial-scale, fully integrated automated laboratories can improve reproducibility and transparency in basic biomedical experiments, and that over nine in ten biomedical papers use methods currently available through these groups.[11]
Low-cost laboratory automation
A large obstacle to the implementation of automation in laboratories has been its high cost. Many laboratory instruments are very expensive. This is justifiable in many cases, as such equipment can perform very specific tasks employing cutting-edge technology. However, there are devices employed in the laboratory that are not highly technological but still are very expensive. This is the case of many automated devices, which perform tasks that could easily be done by simple and low-cost devices like simple
So far, using such low-cost devices together with laboratory equipment was considered to be very difficult. However, it has been demonstrated that such low-cost devices can substitute without problems the standard machines used in laboratory.[12][21][22] It can be anticipated that more laboratories will take advantage of this new reality as low-cost automation is very attractive for laboratories.
A technology that enables the integration of any machine regardless of their brand is scripting, more specifically, scripting involving the control of mouse clicks and keyboard entries, like AutoIt. By timing clicks and keyboard inputs, different software interfaces controlling different devices can be perfectly synchronized.[9][23]
References
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- ^ "LIM Source, a laboratory information management systems resource". Archived from the original on 2009-08-11. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
- ^ "Clinical Chemistry 46, No. 5, 2000, pgs. 246–250" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
- ^ "Health Management Technology magazine, October 1, 1995". Archived from the original on 2012-02-17. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
- ^ "Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (formerly NCCLS)". Archived from the original on 2008-10-07. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - S2CID 73412170.)
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - S2CID 13671203.
- ^ Waltz, Emily (2017-03-22). "DIY Lego Robot Brings Lab Automation to Students - IEEE Spectrum". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
- ^ Carvalho, Matheus. "Auto-HPGe, an autosampler for gamma-ray spectroscopy using high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors and heavy shields". HardwareX.
- .
- ISBN 978-3-527-34158-0.
Further reading
- OCLC 77706455, archived from the originalon 25 February 2012, retrieved 25 July 2009