ARUP Laboratories - Automation Initiative

Automation Initiative

ARUP is an automated laboratory and continues its goal towards total laboratory automation (TLA).

ARUP is continuing to expand and optimize its automated processes in order to improve quality, turnaround time and productivity.

ARUP is the most automated laboratory in North America and continually looks for opportunities to use automation to replace manual processes.

ARUP’s current automation includes:

• A 1,100-foot (340 m) transport and sorting system with a capacity of 5,000 specimens per hour.
• A custom-built automated storage sorter that can sort 4000 finished specimens per hour into storage trays. This machine supplements two 1,000-per-hour storage sorters that were at production capacity.
• The trays of finished specimens are loaded into a two-story automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) housed in the world’s largest clinical laboratory freezer. This fully automated system has a capacity greater than 2.3 million specimens and individual specimens can be retrieved in 2.5 minutes.
• The world’s first automated thawing and mixing work-cells that thaw and then mix frozen specimens at a rate of more than 1,000 per hour each, reducing pre-analytical preparation and turnaround time while improving testing quality.
• A unique Sort-To-Light (STL) system for automated tracking of manual specimens not placed on the automated transport and sorting system. The bar codes of all so-called manual specimens (whether frozen, refrigerated, or room temperature) are scanned, which causes a plastic square to light up indicating the correct temporary holding bin for each specimen. The system also tracks when specimens are removed from the bins for transfer to laboratory sections for testing.

The combined impacts of these automated systems has improved ARUP’s lost specimen rate to Six Sigma levels, believed to be the best among US reference laboratories.