Lab Automation: Making Lab Life Easier with Lab Automation Software

Laboratory automation takes many different people from many different areas to accomplish.  There is always research and development, new technologies, researchers, commercial and government specialist, academia and many more that must be included in the process.  It can be a tangle of specialists, each with their own opinion and perspective.  Here is some basic information that is important to know.

Lab Automation Software

There are a lot of machines in a laboratory.  To make them work cohesively, it is necessary to have the right technology and software in place to make that happen.  Facilities today are looking for easy to use and cost-effective lab automation software to make that happen.  It has to be timely, progressive and accurate to keep the testing going twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.

One huge obstacle to the implementation of laboratory automation software has been its high cost.  Not only is the machinery expensive, but the software to run it is too. What is ideal is a technology and software which can be coded with the control of a mouse and keyboard would be ideal.

Liquid Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry

These two methods have become an essential part in many types of laboratory automation.  They can analyze large amounts of specimens with accurate results and sensitivity.  Sample preparation for either of this can be complicated or requires multiple transfers.  Yet there are several steps which can be automated, making liquid chromatograph and mas spectrometry less labor intensive.

For this reason, it is crucial to understand that 12 or more pieces of laboratory equipment can make up one work cell.  Using either liquid chromatography or mass spectrometry can use one or more cells to complete their analysis.  Each machine in a cell might be made a different company and come with a unique operational software, which will sometime promise its own integrational software.  To put it very simply, some equipment just won’t work together. No matter how new or innovative the equipment, no lab automation software will work in this case.

The answer is to find a scheduling software which can be integrated to send the samples from one work cell to another.  For instance, the use of robot arms can move samples from one place to another, provide needed supplies, monitor and adjust sample storage to make sure their integrity is maintained and even monitor the results to make 

sure of the quality of the results.

Some machines involved in laboratory automation software and life science automation are just not compatible, but that does not mean that some facets of the process cannot be automated.  With the right software, a scheduling software can help to take some of the intricate steps away, so that the work force needed to run these tests can be lessened.  It can also ensure the quality of the results by monitor temperatures of samples, bringing needed supplies to the work cell, and recording of data in an automated and secure way.