Clinical laboratories and point-of-care settings are undergoing a quiet revolution. Automation platforms that once merely transported tubes now make routing decisions, flag anomalies, and trigger reflex testing without human intervention—and the implications for patient care are profound.
The transformation is most visible in high-volume reference labs, where total laboratory automation systems from Siemens Healthineers, Roche, and Beckman Coulter have matured from conveyance systems into intelligent orchestrators. But the more consequential shift may be happening at the point of care, where platforms like Cepheid’s GeneXpert and Abbott’s ID NOW are being woven into clinical decision support systems that compress the time from sample to treatment decision.
This edition of The Mino Times examines the emerging candidates for automation across the diagnostic continuum—from the centralized testing lab to the community clinic—and asks which workflows are genuinely ready for autonomous operation and which remain aspirational.