By David Wold
Spatial biology, or spatial omics, is the ambitious term covering the science and technologies that allow researchers and clinicians to collect, explore, and analyze spatially resolved information on the interactions of individual...
By David Wold
Understanding the spatial context of the changes that occur in molecular and cellular interactions during disease is critical for the development of effective diagnostics and novel therapies. Spatial biology, or spatial omics, is the...
By Mellisa Enriquez
Tecan's design engineering plays a crucial role in driving the automation of molecular diagnostics workflows. The Tecan® ADP pipettor range has a proven track record of successful integration into...
By Nick Smith
The launch of your new in vitro diagnostics (IVD) system is imminent. You’ve read in our first article about the 5 major ingredients for success: retaining technical expertise, investing in training, ensuring regional focus,...
By Mellisa Enriquez
Molecular diagnostics offers researchers and clinicians valuable insights into the mechanisms of disease, allowing them to assess predisposition, as well as to design and...
By Nick Smith
The development phase of your new automated system is coming to an end. You’ve fine-tuned your IVD instrument with the help of your Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner, tested it thoroughly with...
By Joe Guterl
Bring the test to the patient, not the patient to the test. When diagnostic test instruments are available at the point of care (POC), healthcare providers and patients will have faster and easier access to reliable results. Risks can...
By Joe Guterl
More than $72 billion – that is what some researchers estimate will be the global point-of-care (POC) biochemical diagnostic testing market size in 2027, up from $36 billion in 2021.1,2 The POC molecular diagnostics market is expected...
By Günter Weisshaar
The announcement of the In Vitro Diagnostics Regulation (IVDR) in 2017 was celebrated as an essential upgrade to in vitro diagnostic (IVD) device regulations in Europe. This article discusses the important changes, challenges,...
By Nicholas Smith
You are considering an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner to support you in bringing your idea to market. The planned in vitro diagnostic device may require components, robotics and modules. You may need integration...
By Laura Nea
The global trend toward more stringent regulatory control of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) medical devices is sending shock waves through the industry. Now that we have passed the halfway mark in the transition to Europe’s new In Vitro...
By Laura Nea
Is your business IVDR-ready, or are there treacherous gaps in your strategy? This November marks the halfway point in the five-year transition to the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR) 2017/746—a major regulatory overhaul that calls...
By Andreas Schmitt
When you have a diagnostic lab instrument and want to make the move to automation, creating high-quality, reliable and intuitive robot control software that, optimizes throughput, provides process safeguards, and analyzes and...
By David Wold
The global COVID-19 pandemic is putting unprecedented pressure on laboratories to meet demand for accurate, large-scale, high-throughput testing. In such extreme circumstances, conserving samples and minimizing risk of contamination is...
By Remi Magnan
Low drug efficacy and safety concerns are the main reasons for late-stage withdrawal of drugs in clinical trials and account for 87% of all phase III submission failures. [1] Toxicity towards certain organs like the heart, liver or...
By Claudio Bui
Getting to market quickly is essential when introducing new instrumentation into a fast-paced industry sector like genomics. When the pressure is on, rapid prototyping can be the key to quickly and efficiently building a reliable...
By Claudio Bui
Getting to market in time with a fully functional IVD instrument that is automated requires precision planning and laser focus at all stages of development. At the onset of your project, it is important to weigh the development risks...
By Claudio Bui
With complex products like laboratory instruments used to automate genomic testing, time to market is often a critical factor in determining whether or not to go ahead with product development. The obvious problem is that as projects...
By Remi Magnan
Research using stem cells and stem cell-derived models holds huge promise for drug discovery and therapeutic applications. However, creating, characterizing, maintaining and expanding stem cell-derived models and therapeutics can be a...
By Dr Beatrice Marg-Haufe
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone to look at laboratory routines to see if they are really pandemic proof. For example, the explosive demand for high throughput genomic analysis often creates pressures upstream to...
By David Wold
Designing and manufacturing lab instruments that include automated liquid handling is challenging at the best of times, but in the face of increased demand for faster testing, it’s even more critical to select the right partner and...
By Joe Rotter
How do you prepare for the unexpected? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light how challenging it is for labs and production facilities to scale up quickly in times of need. The sudden surge in demand for laboratory solutions at the...
By Yves Wurmitzer
From top global instrument makers to smaller startups, life science companies face a challenge when developing and launching new IVD products in a fast-paced market. How do you create a product that meets market needs without...
By Nicholas Smith
The In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) medical device market is fast-paced and highly competitive, with new and advanced applications appearing every day. High technical risks, cost overruns, schedule delays and missed end-user targets...
By Nicholas Smith
You have made the decision to enter into the development of an IVD medical device for your customers. You have learned that inviting an OEM partner into your project could be beneficial to reduce risks and fill expertise or skill...
By Nicholas Smith
If you’re thinking about automating your in vitro diagnostic (IVD) product it can be hard to decide whether to outsource to an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) partner or keep the development in-house. While the familiarity...
By Andreas Scheidegger
Introducing a new in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) lab automation solution can add an entirely new dimension to your existing product portfolio and business. Launching a complete system that provides harmony between chemistry and...
By Magali Fischer
Generating reproducible, accurate ELISA data starts with reliable reagents that are highly sensitive and specific. These are often available as kits that need to be incorporated into an...
By Magali Fischer
With more than 50% of preclinical results estimated to be irreproducible, the reliability of methods, assays, and protocols is a major concern in all areas of research. Many critical assay workflows, such as those for ELISA tests,...
By Nicholas Smith
It can be easy to dismiss outsourcing lab automation in favour of seemingly less expensive do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions. However, outsourcing is more cost effective than it might seem. By taking advantage of the expertise of...
By Nicholas Smith
With open source software and high quality off-the-shelf components, do-it-yourself (DIY) lab automation solutions are trending. While developing lab automation in-house might seem attractive at first glance, the road is littered...
By Micaela Wochner
As a diagnostic product moves through its lifecycle, its development, engineering and customer support needs change. In order to extend the period of product profitability and customer loyalty for as long as possible, you must...
By Micaela Wochner
For product manufacturers in the medical and diagnostics equipment industry, developing an effective product lifecycle management process is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must have”. From managing the cost of product...
By Claudio Bui and Yves Wurmitzer
Innovating, developing and bringing a new automated liquid handling product to market quickly, before requirements and needs change, is no easy feat. A software development kit (SDK) supporting your platform and...
By Manuel Bauer
Advances in the treatment of disease, such as the many different types of cancer and cardiac diseases, mean that organ and bone marrow transplantation is on the rise.1 This rise has in turn generated an increased need for accurate...
By Claudio Bui
Lab automation and liquid handling solutions are evolving rapidly, shaped by many of the same forces and disruptive technologies that define the fourth industrial revolution. Alongside Industry 4.0, you could say that the era of...
By David Wold
Taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell…humans rely on five exquisitely powerful senses to negotiate even the most mundane tasks. Liquid handling robots don’t have that luxury; they are required to perform repetitive, high-precision tasks...
By Claudio Bui
Analytical instrumentation is evolving so fast that engineers run the risk of their robotic platforms becoming obsolete before the development cycle can be completed. The competitive life science instrumentation market is expanding at...
By Petra Popp
Your diagnostics equipment business is growing in leaps and bounds. And no wonder—BCC Research reports that the global market for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) products is growing at a rate of 6.7% and should reach $102 billion by 2022.¹...
By Petra Popp
Customer service has become a crucial battleground for all types of industries, including life science, medical diagnostics and pharma. A study by NewVoiceMedia1 revealed that customer service plays a significant part in overall...
By Maria Liwanag
The syringe pump is the workhorse of any automated liquid handling instrument. A single syringe pump may complete one cycle every second, and as many as 4 million cycles in its lifetime. Keeping your pump syringes and components in...
By David Wold
The impact of pump pressure sensors on your automated liquid handling pump performance is often underestimated and underappreciated. The saying, “You don't know what you’ve got ‘till it's gone” applies to many things in life –...
By Hal Wehrenberg
What happens when lab automation projects are unsuccessful? One out-take is learning what creates a stronger process and methodology. That's exactly what we found at Tecan after working with several hundred customers on lab...
By David Wold
With high-throughput genomics impacting every corner of biology, the demand for more efficient Next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflows is growing rapidly. Automating the process of NGS sample preparation is crucial to avoid...
By David Wold
Today’s hematology labs are faced with escalating demands to deliver robust and accurate blood test results quickly. At the heart of automated diagnostic systems for blood analysis are liquid handling pumps, which must deliver precise...
By David Wold
From the perspective of a lab automation systems engineer, specifying the optimal liquid handling pump and associated fluidic components is often central to the design process, especially for products that will be used in a clinical...
By Hal Wehrenberg
All automation is controlled by software and understanding the differences between options can be complicated. Underestimating the impact of software may set back your budget or critical timelines.
By Yves Wurmitzer
Anatomical pathology labs face ever-increasing pressure to meet demands for enhanced throughput, improved quality and cost savings. Additionally as we saw in the previous article in this series, anatomical pathology has to adapt to...
By Severin Heynen
As labs face tighter profit margins and the need to minimize cost of goods, there is increasing pressure to implement more efficient and responsive mechanisms for procurement and inventory management. A large proportion of annual...
By Claudio Bui
When you design a complex laboratory automation system or device, every OEM liquid handling component that you integrate into it should be reliable, dependable and expected to perform to the highest industry standards. Subpar quality...
By Hal Wehrenberg
Congratulations. It took you quite some time and effort to convince your management or institution on the value of investing in automating your experimental or clinical workflow. The applications were submitted, the presentations...
By Claudio Bui
The demand for advanced medical and diagnostic testing continues to accelerate. Laboratories, hospitals, and emerging consumer genomics companies are demanding quicker test sequences resulting in the design and development of new...
By Yves Wurmitzer
The anatomical pathology – or histopathology – services sector is projected to grow, but histopathology labs the world over are struggling in the face of shortages in trained pathologists, increasing regulatory pressure, changing...
By Markus Vogler
The last decade has seen dramatic changes in the world of diagnostics, with experts even referring to the present time as the start of the fourth industrial revolution. Digitalization, along with other technological advances such as...
By Nicholas Smith
As sequencing grows significantly in China, how are Chinese home-grown companies making the most of it?
In December 2017, the UK and China announced a joint initiative to advance collaboration in science and innovation¹. The...
By Markus Vogler
Similar to the highly competitive automobile industry, clinical laboratories and manufacturers servicing the clinical diagnostics and life science markets, are always under pressure to increase quality and reliability. Likewise,...
By Markus Vogler
The world of diagnostics, like so many other industries, is entering what leaders in the World Economic Forum are calling the fourth industrial revolution. Digitalization, robotization and automation have given rise to highly...
By Simon Fogarty
The growing productivity crisis in drug discovery and development is forcing pharmaceutical companies large and small around the globe to rethink their research and development (R&D) strategies. As investors look to small and...
By Claudio Bui
When introducing a new product to the automated liquid handling market, getting there first with high quality and reliable hardware is vital to capturing and maintaining early market leadership. How can you gain that advantage when...
By Claudio Bui
When designing products that include automated liquid handling, how do you decide when and what to buy from an OEM components supplier vs. designing in-house? How do you then decide who will be the right partner for you? A...
By Claudio Bui
Everyone knows if you work harder and faster you’ll get done sooner, but then many are left wondering why they didn’t get to market first. It may seem simple, but when it comes to life science laboratory automation it’s not as easy as...
By Florence Collins
A long-term clinical lab study lasting over 10 years showed that more than 60% of all mistakes in the stat lab (the lab that receives high priority samples) can be attributed to the pre-analytical phase. This figure has not...
By Florence Collins
Scinomix, Inc., founded in 2001, creates customized solutions for labeling tubes, vials and plates in many life science applications. We took the chance to ask Nigel Malterer (CEO) and Jonathan King (Automation Software Engineer)...
By Florence Collins
Barcodes play a central role in minimizing the risk of error in lab automation by providing secure tracking of components throughout the workflow. Barcode-guided lab automation can be simple and cost-effective, with significant...
By Claudio Bui
When developing a liquid handling instrument, it is important to be first to market for early market leadership. Dr. Claudio Bui, Head of Product Concepts, Tecan, considers key elements to completing a project quickly and efficiently,...
By Nicholas Smith
Jeff Bishop, Vice President, Research & Development, Singulex, explains the proprietary single molecule counting (SMC™) technology which has become today’s gold standard for immunoassay technology.
By Martin Braendle
Robotics and automation have become essential to the future plans of drug discovery and clinical diagnostic companies. Executives are looking to increase productivity and reduce costs, and automation fits the bill in every respect.
By Hal Wehrenberg
What happens when the robots in your lab become self aware? Take a closer look at this issue and the possibilities by watching this presentation on self-aware automation from SLAS 2016.