Remote automated laboratory system

Unmanned satellite laboratories are a possible alternative to a central laboratory facility. To demonstrate the practicality of such an approach, investigators at the University of Virginia have developed remote automated laboratory systems- (RALS) designed to automate POCT in hospital intensive care units. The results from the analytical instruments in each RALS are sent to a central monitoring workstation several floors away from the satellite laboratory by a network interface, where results are viewed and either accepted or rejected by a trained medical technologist before being released for clinical use. Error codes built into the analytical instruments are also passed to the main laboratory by the computer netw ork. Technologists in the control center can also shut down the satellite laboratory when necessary, as in the case of instrument failure. Patient information is downloaded from the hospital information system in real time so that users can select their patients and the tests to perform from a fist presented on the computer touchscreen. 

A Bar Code Primer. Santa Cruz, CA, Worthington Data Solutions, 1996. 

American Society for Testing and Materials. Transferring information between clinical instruments and computer systems. E1394-91. Philadelphia (http //www.astm.org), ASTM, 1991. 

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In the production laboratory all synthesis and purification processes are carried out in remote-operated fully automated computer-controlled systems (synthesis modules, see Figure 7) located in heavily shielded hot cells (see Figure 8). Dispensing of individual doses is in many cases also carried out by automated systems. 

The NCCLS has an Area Committee on Automation and Informatics, which oversees the above standards and initiates new standards development projects. Current standards development projects include Data Content for Specimen Identification, Protocols to Vafidate Laboratory Information Systems, and Remote Access to Hospital Diagnostic Devices via tihe internet. In 2002, ASTM transferred to NCCLS the ownership and copyright of aU nine standards in its E31.13 group, including the two standards referenced above. These standards all relate to the clinical laboratory, with some of them simply preceding or overlapping the NCCLS automation standards. NCCLS is now in the process of evaluating which of these standards will be maintained and updated and which may be abandoned. 

In addition to the automated devices and processing units that were developed primarily to automate chemistry and immunoassay that are described above, a variety of other instruments and processes have been automiated and used in the clinical laboratory. They include urine analyzers, flow cytometers, hematology cell counters, nucleic add analyzers, microtiter plate systems, point-of-care analyzers, and remotely located systems. 

Transmission of state-of-health information, particularly maintenance-related data, suggests the next aspects of effective automated systems command and control. This is most important for remote field systems, but can make operation of laboratory equipment easier as well. 

The automated process and the integrated recording of the parameters ensure the reproducibility of the laboratory work and the verification of the results. Monitoring of the configured limit values and a reliable alarm system allow for continuous work 24h per day and 7 day s per week, even without laboratory personnel being present, since the automation system allows remote viewing and intervention, by means of web technologies, for example. 

Automated wet chemical analysis systems such as CHEMSENS and NERNST can be used in conjunction with electroanalytical sensors, not only to reduce the mass, cost, and power consumption of the instrument, but also to provide a very detail picture of the aqueous geochemistry of samples in remote extreme environments. The direction of such devices points to evermore sophisticated robotic systems that could one day provide basically the same chemical analyses as a sophisticated terrestrial anal3Tical laboratory. 

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