ABSTRACT
As the workload increases in any field of endeavor, there is a need either to automate or to identify alternative strategies to accomplish the task. The objective of automation may be to enable a higher workload, to reduce costs, to increase reliability or to enhance safety. Whatever the objective, any consideration of automation must involve a careful cost benefit analysis. Automation for its own sake is unlikely to be satisfactory. Laboratory automation, in one of its most refined forms, can be seen in the typical clinical analysers used as diagnostic tools throughout the world. These machines tend to depend on refined, dedicated technologies where instrumentation has been developed to match the analytical chemistries. Because essentially the same types of analysis are carried out in every clinical laboratory, and the potential market, therefore, is relatively large, investment in the necessary technology has been justified. In a typical bioscience laboratory, however, and particularly in a research environment, the range of tasks tend to be more variable and less well defined. Integrated automation systems are less common because it has been difficult to justify the investment where the tasks by their nature are ephemeral. This notwithstanding, various repetitive tasks typical of the bioscience research environment and QC laboratories have been highly automated through the development of sophisticated automated workstations, e.g. chromatographic autosamplers, robotic sample processors and automated instruments of various types.
