Stand-alone automated solutions can enhance laboratory operations

Clinical laboratory automation has developed over the past decade as one me ans of consolidating testing, reducing costs, and improving the effectivene ss of laboratory testing. Most of the developments have been aimed at core clinical laboratory operations, and have primarily addressed preanalytical and analytical processing of traditional specimens arriving in blood collec tion or similar aliquot tubes. Much less attention has been given to specia lized applications such as processing specimens for urine toxicology, and o nly recently have vendors attacked the problems associated with sorting and maintaining the laboratory's inventory of specimens. This report highlight s selected developments in these areas, describes one approach to cost-effe ctive custom platform development, and discusses the advantages and pitfall s to solving problems with laboratory automation. (C) 2000 American Associa tion for Clinical Chemistry.