SLAS 2019 Americas Sample Management Symposium

Sophisticated and often expensive automated solutions exist for a wide variety of laboratory processes in the sample management environment, however there remain many processes for which commercially available products do not exist or do not fully meet the needs of the end user. Fortunately, the rapid evolution of hardware and software tools over the past decade has made development of custom automation much more accessible for laboratory staff. The result of this evolution can be seen in many labs where technologies such as 3D printers and open source electronics platforms have become commonly utilized tools in the day-to-day operations of the lab.

The Lead Identification team at Scripps Florida is one such lab where these tools have been leveraged to address a wide variety of challenges in the Sample Management workspace. Use of these tools has resulted in the development of a number of unique devices including a custom microplate imaging platform, an open-source microplate illuminator and many other things. These have been integrated within our informatics infrastructure in a fashion which has quantitively impacted the efficiency of many processes in the lab by reducing staff workload and improving quality assurance. The advantages of developing in-house automation and lessons learned over a decade of doing so are presented.