Healthcare Technology Featured Article

April 10, 2013

Process Automation from BD Diagnostics Helps Canadian Laboratory to Quickly Diagnose Infections


CML HealthCare Inc. operates 114 C.A.R.E. centers around Ontario, a reference laboratory in Ontario, and 84 imaging centers in Ontario and British Columbia.

The company needed a quick solution to increase productivity in its laboratory, which processes over three million microbiology tests per year. By the third quarter of 2013, CML HealthCare will install two BD Kiestra TLA systems.

The TLA, which stands for "total laboratory automation," is one of two Kiestra solutions sold by BD Diagnostics. The other is a Work Cell solution that allows for modular laboratory expansion within limited spaces.

The BD Kiestra TLA provides automated inoculation and incubation of samples. By using digital imaging technology, the system detects bacterial growth before it can be discovered by the unaided eye. Ideally, the increased efficiency should allow lab workers to spend less time manually dealing with specimens and more time performing analytical and value-added tasks.

With the purchase of the two systems, CML HealthCare hopes to increase its capacity for samples processing at its central laboratory. This expansion will allow the company to form more partnerships with hospitals and other medical providers.

Automating lab processes has significantly reduced healthcare costs by cutting the price per test in microbiology and other labs. For example, the Mount Sinai Medical Center's chemistry lab increased its test volume ten times between the years of 1965 and 2000. The laboratory generally stayed fixed, but automation increased production. Price per test dropped from $0.79 to $0.15.

Another report from Ohio State University estimated that automation increased the number of specimens processed by each full-time person by 72 percent and increased overall lab productivity by 26 percent.

In an article for Lab Manager magazine, Joe Liscouski noted that clinical laboratories had much in common with labs in other industries. Two main differences, he pointed out, were that samples came from fluids, tissues and other biological materials that were evaluated by strict, standardized methods.

Another difference between the clinical lab and labs in other industries is that charge rates for each test are set either by contract or by the federal government. Within such a restrictive environment, automation of protocols was the sensible solution.

In addition to cutting costs, lab automation helps patients to obtain test results more quickly. “Rapid diagnosis and treatment of infections is critical; however, many of the traditional testing protocols take two or three days to generate an actionable result," noted Tom Polen, who is president of BD Diagnostics.

"Using the BD Kiestr TLA system, integrated with other rapid diagnostic technologies, CML will be a pioneer in implementing technology that can often reduce those times significantly."




Edited by Jamie Epstein
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