Integration Tying It All Together

TABLE 11.7 High-Level Project Activities for an Assay Robot 

Automated sample dilutors and assay robots can independently have a beneficial impact on a laboratory s efficiency and throughput. Further improvements can come from integration of the two types of systems and a LIMS. There are many ways of accomplishing this, based on the needs of an individual laboratory however, two general approaches are described  

Using a LIMS to direct the operation of automated systems 

The first approach is based on the fact that the LIMS contains information such as sample ID, run number, sample location, and sample dilution factor. This information can be extracted from the LIMS and used to create worklists for automated dilutors (see Fig. 11.12). This eliminates the need for an analyst to re-enter this information into the dilutor, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing transcription errors. Implementing this requires the creation of a custom application that can query the LIMS and translate the information into a worklist that can be read by the automated dilutor. 

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