The Personalized Lab Automation concept was developed to provide quality, flexibility, efficiency and connectivity for every lab, allowing them to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals and patients who rely on the results.
Roche’s automation portfolio and IT solutions have been completely renewed over the last years to fit the needs of your lab today and tomorrow. Healthcare professionals and clinicians have higher expectations as healthcare systems evolve to remain long term and economically sustainable: faster clinical outcomes, higher predictability in results turn-around time, increased traceability, full process control, all while receiving the highest quality levels.
Personalized Lab Automation plays a crucial role in mastering these challenges, regardless of the size and the type of your lab. Personalized Lab Automation offers individualized combinations of cobas IT, analytical, automated pre- and post-analytical solutions that best suit each individual customer – whether a commercial, an independent, or hospital network both for core lab as point of care testing.
"While renewing our portfolio, we had three specific design goals in mind: to connect, automate and generate insights. We thoroughly looked at the availability of the latest and upcoming technologies to design a leading portfolio supporting process innovation both from an operational, and clinical perspective, while considering laboratory consolidation combined with decentralized testing in satellite laboratories, or point of care settings", said Georgios Spitadakis, Lifecycle Leader for Workflow and IT at Roche.
Brain, hands and legs – three levels of an automated lab
A person works using the brain, hands and legs and this is exactly how virtual, standalone and connected automation work.
- Virtual automation works like the brain. Through cobas IT solutions, labs can start automating only with a computer screen and a scanner. Virtual automation gives you full sample traceability, while increasing efficiency and reducing paper-based work lists. This entry level of automation gives you control and minimizes human error as the system guides the process.
- Standalone automation works like hands while keeping the benefits of virtual automation. Roche’s standalone solutions can handle all pre-analytical steps, such as preparing samples through check-in, sample quality check, aliquoting, sorting and so on, for every lab discipline. This significantly reduces manual steps in the lab, enhancing error handling, safety and process quality.
- Connected automation works like legs. It gathers benefits from all levels of automation and adds automated transportation of samples. This integrated level automates processes throughout the lab, including pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical steps. It maximizes predictability of time to test results as it eliminates the need for staff to carry samples from one place to the next. Cobas IT solutions help handle these steps through adaptive workflow management, which improves turnaround time (TAT) and traceability of processes. The entire solution is designed to make the pieces work flawlessly together.
cobas IT solutions – the nucleus of Personalized Lab Automation
The brain of Roche’s automation are our cobas IT solutions – web-based applications with scalable modules that are designed to manage complex lab processes and give sample testing and result data an efficient and transparent flow. It automates the three main areas of lab operations: pre-analytics, analytics and post analytics – but can also extend beyond to ordering, blood collection, validation and reporting.
cobas IT solutions enable a paperless workflow, and are structured around work areas that focus on the tasks at hand. This enables a lab technician to know what is happening at every stage of the process. A unique workflow engine removes the need to write complex rules to manage the sample automation and can even predict impact of changes before implementing. High levels of auto-validation can be achieved to reduce manual work and reduce the turnaround time.
Whether it’s a hospital network needing fully connected transportation and integration with its laboratory information system, or a smaller lab that just needs work area connectivity, everyone will be able to find the right combination of services to meet their needs. This is a unique offering, which supports automation in all types and sizes of labs.
"Expectations are shifting from ‘providing correct data’ to transforming massive amounts of data into meaningful information generating insights in what is happening in the laboratory. In addition, laboratories seek eliminating all non-value added steps in order to increase operational efficiency, while automating the complete menu", says Georgios Spitadakis, Lifecycle Leader for Workflow and IT at Roche. "Thanks to our workflow and IT solutions, we consult and support our customers – big or small – to achieve this goal, improving the efficiency of their laboratory operations, which in return leads to faster clinical results distribution."
Roche offers all three levels of automation as one solution. This means that no matter how much your lab grows, merges or changes, you can count on Roche to provide you with a compatible, scalable and personalized solution. All this while offering unique services that can only come from using a single supplier and trusted partner.