Automation provides a number of benefits to clinical, industrial, and research laboratories, including elimination of human errors, improvement in consistency, minimization of contamination, increased throughput, decreased costs, and reduced hands-on time. At the same time, multiplex assays offer the benefits of more data per sample, faster reaction times, reduced sample consumption, enhanced scalability, and a number of additional benefits due to elimination of repetitive steps.
Integrating laboratory automation with multiplex assays provides significant efficiencies to workflow processes, especially when a large number of samples are being analyzed, or when a highly multiplexed assay is being developed. Automation can be partially or fully implemented. For example, a low test volume lab may automate only the washing steps of an assay, whereas a core facility or high volume testing lab may want to automate all assay steps, including incubation, microplate washing, thermocycling, and microplate shaking, into a single, walkaway system.
Multiple automation criteria should be considered for each lab, such as plate format, speed of liquid handling, deck capaci
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