How automation allows laboratory staff to be more human
Laboratory professionals have long upheld a high standard of accuracy and reliability under increasingly difficult circumstances. Maintaining these outcomes will require not only perseverance, but also new approaches to sustain quality and efficiency.
Persistent staffing shortages in clinical laboratories, combined with rising test volumes, have created a critical inflection point for patient care; the effective combination of human expertise and advanced technology is setting a new benchmark for sustainable operations.
Recent data illustrates how staffing shortages are affecting laboratory professionals and highlights how automation is an essential strategy to offset the impact of staffing shortages on laboratory operations and enhance the lab’s valuable contributions to the overall healthcare system.
A recent survey conducted by the Harris Poll commissioned by Siemens Healthineers found that 39% of laboratory professionals cite limited staffing as one of their top operational challenges.¹ Vacancy rates remain between 7% and 11% nationally and can reach as high as 25% in some regions. The workforce pipeline remains fragile: 28% of laboratory professionals over the age of 50 report plans to retire within the next three to five years.
Adding to the struggle, test volumes continue to rise, placing additional pressure on laboratory operations. Medical laboratory technologists and scientists process more than 14 billion tests annually in the United States. With approximately 338,000 practicing professionals, the equivalent of one scientist now supports testing for roughly 1,000 Americans.2
It has become critically apparent that these challenges have a cumulative effect, creating operational inefficiencies that extend beyond the laboratory and affect the broader healthcare system. So, what is to be done about it?
Here are three ways laboratory automation can help solve for these pain points.
1. Create a workplace where lab staff feel safe, supported, and successful
“Ensuring that employees can work at peak efficiency requires a workplace in which they feel supported. But it also requires the right tools, including automation and robotics. Automation and robotics can also create a safer workplace by reducing contamination risks.”
-Professor Christoph Keck, MD, Head of Medicover Laboratories Germany Diagnostics Services, Medicover
As Dr. Keck points out, laboratory automation is about more than volumes and turnaround time. It’s about how the lab needs to evolve to attract and retain talent. The latest research on Gen Z suggests the next generation of employees are indeed hard workers, but they don’t want to burn out doing uninspiring work.3
The reduction in manual tasks such as sample sorting, decapping and recapping of tubes, centrifugation, verifying sample volume and integrity, and archiving and retrieving store specimens not only saves time, but can lead to increased employee satisfaction. In fact, the survey also highlighted these manual tasks as those that laboratory professionals would most like to see automated. These repetitive steps are time-consuming, physically taxing, risky due to exposure to biohazards, and prone to human error, especially under conditions of sustained staffing shortages:
- 14% of laboratory professionals reported making a high-risk error.
- 22% admitted to making a low-risk error related to documentation or repeat testing.
- 29% expressed concern about making mistakes due to feeling overworked.
Modern automation platforms are designed to address these challenges. New solutions consolidate or streamline up to 25 manual steps into largely hands-free workflows. These changes reduce time spent on otherwise tedious tasks, minimize risk associated with sample handling, and enable staff to focus on higher-value tasks that can contribute to higher colleague satisfaction—training and mentoring, for example.
2. Laboratory automation isn’t just for megalabs
One of the most common misconceptions is that automation is prohibitively expensive and only accessible to large, high-volume laboratories. Adoption of automation is widely supported by laboratory professionals themselves:
- 95% agree that automation can help improve patient care.
- 89% believe their laboratories need automation to keep up with demand.
- 91% feel that AI tools could help address unmet patient care challenges.
However, many lab managers assume that automation solutions are out of reach for small or mid-sized labs. Task-targeted automation can be a solution for labs looking for pre- and post-analytical capabilities but have space or staff limitations. Large-scale automation capabilities such as decapping, sealing, and sorting are built into standalone laboratory analyzers – even ones with a small footprint.
Whether you’re operating an independent lab, a network-affiliated lab, a commercial reference lab. or a megalab processing thousands of samples per day, implementing laboratory automation is within reach.
Standardized, automated processes also enhance quality control and accelerate turnaround times, particularly for urgent or STAT testing. The impact of lab turnaround time on other hospital operations should not be overlooked. One multi-hospital study, for instance, found that slow lab results contributed to a 61% longer emergency department stay and a 43% treatment delay on average.4 Faster turnaround times that can improve operational efficiency enable physicians to act on results sooner, reducing idle wait times for beds or procedures—and ultimately contribute more positively to patient satisfaction scores.
3. Reinvest time where it matters most
“After more than 20 years working with total lab automation systems, I have learned from experience that although technology is important, we cannot leave people aside and that a well-automated laboratory must be a place where people can work feeling like people. For example, technicians at Hospital Clínic Barcelona now spend > 40 % of their shift on result validation and exception management instead of logistics.”
Dr. José Luis Bedini, Core Laboratory Head at Hospital Clínic Barcelona, Spain
The real value automation offers laboratories is the ability to scale workflows more sustainably, in a way that enables more patient touchpoints, while at the same time relieving the burden of repetitive manual work, improving safety, and enabling a greater focus on clinical oversight and expertise.
When asked how they would reallocate time saved through automation, laboratory professionals identified several high-impact activities:
- Training and mentoring employees (46%)
- Performing quality control troubleshooting (42%)
- Managing cross-departmental test sample workflows more efficiently (39%)
What’s noteworthy about lab professionals’ interest in pursuing these activities specifically—staff training, quality control, and communication with stakeholders—is that they align with industry best practices to help insulate labs from the unintended consequences of outsourcing their lab operations. As one white paper notes, “Healthcare organizations have no control over—let alone insight into—their outsourced laboratory’s hiring, training, or workforce upskilling efforts. This lack of oversight presents a real challenge to ensuring timely, quality results.”5
The antidote then is ensuring staff can focus on activities that amplify the lab’s value to stakeholders. This reallocation of time not only benefits laboratory operations, but also strengthens the clinical value laboratories deliver across the healthcare system, and can result in improved patient care.
Informatics solutions can bear the burden of automating workflows, minimizing errors, and enabling seamless data exchange that can provide labs with unprecedented data to make timely, informed and proactive decisions. Digitizing standard operating procedures into a smart IT system that drives automation can alleviate bottlenecks by intelligently directing testing and validating test results against rigorous quality checks and pre- and post-processing procedures.
Scaling operations to meet rising test demands and delivering at peak performance becomes the standard operating benchmark when the lab’s operations are improved with quantitative insights that can be acted upon.
A stronger future built on human and technological strengths
Laboratory professionals have always been central to evidence-based clinical decision-making. Automation is a tool that can extend their impact, not replace it. The path forward is not about choosing between people and technology. It is about equipping laboratory professionals with the tools they need to revive their professional growth, sustain excellence, innovate with confidence, and continue serving as indispensable partners in patient care.
REFERENCES
- AACC whitepaper on overcoming lab staffing shortages. Myadlm.org. Accessed May 27, 2025. https://myadlm.org/advocacy-and-outreach/adlm-policy-reports/2023/adlm-whitepaper-on-overcoming-lab-staffing-shortages.
- Our lab testing capacity is getting dangerously low. Medpagetoday.com. Accessed May 27, 2025. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/98415.
- GWI. Gen Z: Exploring the behaviors, preferences, and priorities of a new generation. GWI. https://www.gwi.com/reports/gen-z/explore?submissionGuid=e0baa08d-ce23-4706-9a0b-18615d700e09.
- Dawande PP, Wankhade RS, Akhtar FI, Noman O. Turnaround Time: An Efficacy Measure for Medical Laboratories. Cureus. 2022;14(9):e28824. Accessed May 27, 2025. https://www.cureus.com/articles/108313-turnaround-time-an-efficacy-measure-for-medical-laboratories#!/.
- ARUP Laboratories. The hidden costs of outsourcing digital pathology. Accessed May 27, 2025. https://go.aruplab.com/l/127321/2025-01-22/57fcxw/127321/1737563989v8O3lquh/Hidden_Costs_of_Outsourcing_Digital.pdf.
