Laboratory Transforms Manual Urinalysis with Automation and More
Pre-analytical products, automated systems, and Lean Six Sigma combined to improve outcomes
In today’s era of automation and Lean Six Sigma processes in laboratory medicine, the manual urinalysis test may be ready for a major makeover. Such a development would be welcome because, in the typical American hospital, the clinical laboratory performs an average of 120 urinalyses per day.
Some clinical laboratory managers consider it counterintuitive that—during a period of automation and implementation of Lean Six Sigma processes—a diagnostic tool as important and ubiquitous as urinalysis would not be perfectly methodized. But that is frequently the case. In many clinical laboratories, the processes utilized for this line of lab tests are often outmoded, inefficient, and can even lead to erroneous results.
