Total Laboratory Automation in Clinical Microbiology: A Note on Needs, Challenges, and Applications in a Pandemic Scenario

Recently, an increasing number of publications on automation in diagnostic laboratories, especially in microbiology, has illustrated its potential impact on modern medicine by enhancing the overall quality of culture-based microbiology testing. In the context of clinical microbiology, total laboratory automation (TLA) is now defined as automating the testing workflow, which comprises all phases from sample inoculation to outcome analysis. Hence, there is a need to design or implement proper laboratory automation management processes to enhance workflow, reduce analysis time, and deliver high-quality results without delay in treatment initiation. This review-cum-perspective article highlights the need and current advancements in diagnostic microbiology automation that could revolutionize laboratory operations in healthcare settings. Automation of the workflow is a crucial advancement in the recent history of laboratory diagnostics that unites many diagnostic specializations into a single track to increase the effectiveness, administration, standardization, reliability, and safety of lab tests. While clinical chemistry laboratories adopted and deployed laboratory automation decades earlier, the process of implementing them into routine clinical microbiological practices has several bottlenecks and is still a lengthy process and fraught with technical and regulatory challenges. Moreover, due to outbreaks including the COVID-19 pandemic of recent times, testing volumes are increasing, and automation could probably be a great solution for small and mid-sized laboratories. This article lists the TLA remedies and the specimen-processing tools that are presently available. The need and challenges to implementing automation in microbiological laboratories are discussed with a note on applications in pandemic scenarios.