Background
The client - a medical diagnostic laboratory group and one of the largest Italian providers of clinical laboratory testing, the most modern and largest PCR-COVID-19 laboratory in Austria and currently growing into one of the leading laboratory companies in Europe.
Business Line: | Duration: | Location: |
Digital Transformation | 22 months | Vienna, Austria |
Objectives
Deployment and configuration of a network of 200+ robotic liquid handling instruments.
Development of protocols (software routines for controlling the robotic instruments) to accommodate continuous need for customised analysis.
Development of software solutions for implementing checks to reduce human errors.
Preventative maintenance by proactively monitoring and interpreting the data generated by the instruments.
APPROACH
Maintaining a very close loop with the client and making sure we focus constantly on the need they are seeking to address.
Full support in day to day operations and maintenance.
RESULTS
150+ protocols developed over a period of 7 months. Supporting the entire operation of PCR testing for Vienna and the surrounding states.
Enabled a transformation from manual process to full automation in 6 months.
Implemented faster analysis of samples by optimising the path of the robot arm over the full course of processing (picking up disposable tips, liquid aspiration/dispense and tips disposal).
Implemented a preventative maintenance solutions that collected data from the entire network and identified the outlier instruments (that would generate errors with a much higher rate than the global median). This approach helped to directly identify critical situations and uncover hidden causes for the errors.
Example of dynamic pipetting implemented as a mean to accommodate aspiration from tubes with various levels of liquid. This solution relieved the operators from the tedious activity of spilling the overfilled tubes prior to the aspiration phase. In the first step the robot is measuring the height of the liquid. Subsequently, it moves the tips to predefined aspiration depths based on a set of thresholds. For illustrative purpose the test was performed using colored water.
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