Today’s competitive healthcare market puts laboratories under immense pressure, making it hard for them to succeed financially as well as operationally. Fewer qualified FTE staff, excessive and growing workloads, budgetary constraints, high quality standards―these are some of the challenges that lab automation needs to address. Dimension Vista® 1500 Intelligent Lab System combined with the StreamLAB® Automation Solution provides labs with trusted automation expertise capable of solving all these issues.

Automation in the laboratory is about reducing manual steps―this has the potential to boost productivity, decrease TAT, enhance operator safety, and reduce human error. Combine the Vista® Intelligent Lab System with the scalable automation solution StreamLAB, and you have a truly automated analyzing solution that can achieve all of this. Staff only need to load specimen tubes onto the workcell, then the StreamLAB Automation Solution reads the barcode labels; sorts, spins, and uncaps tubes; and sends them to the analyzer for whatever tests were ordered. For example, this ultra-integrated chemistry analyzer now offers one of the most comprehensive menus for the detection and differentiation of anemia, including Folate, B12, and Ferritin by LOCI technology, Iron and Total Iron Binding Capacity by photometric methodology, and Haptoglobin, Soluble Transferrin Receptor, and Transferrin testing by nephelometric methodology. The StreamLAB Automation Solution also takes care of re-sealing tubes, as well as tracking archived specimens and communicating with the LIS through EasyLink™.

Because StreamLAB Automation Solution has a flexible and scalable architecture, it can evolve with laboratories’ changing needs or as new technologies become available. Customers can easily connect other Siemens’ analyzers to create one of the most comprehensive menus and reduce the need to send samples out for additional testing. The Vista StreamLAB solution, which completed the controlled product roll out process in July, is now commercially released — many labs are already enjoying the benefits that come with greater lab efficiency and superior testing technologies.