Why is integration in the laboratory important?

Why is integration in the laboratory important?

Much has been written here and in other forums about the desirability of integrated laboratory systems and the factors that are needed to achieve them. Vendor’s talk about their integrated architectures in marketing literature, and their presentations refer to methods by which someone might “integrate” things with their products.

It’s assumed that integration is a good thing but why isn’t discussed, and knowing why and what benefits to expect may change our thinking about how we achieve it.

A survey released by the Association for Laboratory Automation in January 2009 noted that 88% of the labs covered were going to increase their use of automation. Among the driving factors were an increased workload, decreased staff and budget, the need to support increasingly complex science, streamline operations and add new capabilities. If you look at these points you’ll see that they are the same issues that face any organization that needs to meet productivity gains while reducing costs, including manufacturing as an example.

In manufacturing, integration provides better control over production processes; steps of the process are efficiently linked so that materials move from one to the next without human effort. The process can be monitored easily and problems identified and addressed. The cost per product element is optimized, and the process itself can be optimized as better equipment is developed.

Achieving integration in any manufacturing operation – pharmaceutical production, or toys – is dependent upon certain factors:

• Process engineering – the processes are well understood and their suitability for automation demonstrated. The automation is well planned and designed to permit upgrading and revision. The best automation is not done by a fix-the-bottlenecks methodology that can lead to the use of poorly matched technologies. It is done by planning the system as whole, and then implementing those plans.
• Components in the system are designed for integration. This is fundamental to product production but lacking in laboratory work. Lab equipment is designed primarily for human use. A different set of design criteria are needed for integration: standardized control structures, data / information interchange, support for electronic supervisory control, more compact packages with provision for robot access where appropriate. This is a fundamental mindset change in equipment design: vendors need to think about compatibility and cooperation, rather than a product-centric viewpoint. One application where this has been done to considerable user benefit is in the use of micro-titer plates as a sample-holder / method-execution platform in life science applications.
• Automation is considered as part of the process development. Laboratory automation is built around scientific processes: analytical methods, protocols and procedures, etc. These are usually done from the standpoint of the science, once the scientific goals are achieved, we’re done. We have to add another level of criteria to the mix: the ability of the laboratory process to be automated and meet productivity requirements. Those doing research into experiment design or test method development aren’t used to thinking in those terms, but they need to do so because the equipment they are going to be working with incorporates automation, and the next stage in their experimental work may be the development of efficient automated systems. High-throughput screening is a successful example of this.

We now come back to the initial question: Why is integration important? The ability to produce integrated systems – without the need to force-fit components together electrically or through programming – is essential to the development of functioning, productive, laboratory systems. Those systems are essential to successful laboratory science programs. The more easily integrated system components are, the lower the cost of development, with a higher likelihood of success.

The parallels between product manufacturing and efficient laboratory automation processes isn’t accidental. It is the convergence of similar demands on productivity and cost-efficiency leading to structurally similar solutions. The implementation of those solutions is based on similar requirements: process management, standards, and integration.

Submitted by:
Joe Liscouski
Institute for Laboratory Automation
Email: j.liscouski@institutelabauto.org
Web: www.InstituteLabAuto.org