Department of Infectious Disease, TriCore Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Department of Microbiology, Willis-Knighton Health Systems, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA.
J Clin Microbiol. 2021 Feb 18;59(3). doi: 10.1128/JCM.01969-20.
Automation in clinical microbiology is starting to become more commonplace and reportedly offers several advantages over the manual laboratory. Most studies have reported on the rapid turnaround times for culture results, including times for identification of pathogens and their respective antimicrobial susceptibilities, but few have studied the benefits from a laboratory efficiency point of view. This is the first large, multicenter study in North America to report on the benefits derived from automation measured in full-time equivalents (FTE), FTE reallocation, productivity, cost per specimen, and cost avoidance. Pre- and post-full automation audits were done at 4 laboratories that have vastly different culture volumes, and results show that regardless of the size of the facility, improved efficiencies can be realized after implementation of full laboratory automation.
临床微生物学中的自动化正变得越来越普遍，据报道，它相对于手动实验室具有多个优势。大多数研究都报告了培养结果的快速周转时间，包括病原体及其相应的药敏鉴定时间，但很少有研究从实验室效率的角度来研究其益处。这是北美第一项大型多中心研究，报告了通过全职等效（FTE）、FTE 重新分配、生产力、每份标本成本和成本避免来衡量的自动化所带来的益处。在四个培养量差异很大的实验室进行了自动化前后的审核，结果表明，无论设施规模大小如何，在实施全实验室自动化后都可以实现效率的提高。
