Laboratory workflow: find where the time goes.
I review how samples, people and information move through your laboratory, from reception and registration through batching, analysis and reporting, and give you a prioritized list of changes the laboratory can make, with what each one needs.
Fifteen years inside clinical laboratories, running routine and redesigning it: a whole-blood workflow that took five people’s preparation to one operator at Karolinska University Hospital, and the end-to-end sample flow written for ABC Labs across five sample streams.
- Reception · registration · batching · handoffs
- Timings measured, not reported
- Remote mapping, site observation
- Sweden, Europe and the Asia-Pacific
4 situations
When a workflow review is the right start
- Reception sets the pace
Samples wait to be registered, the queue moves through the day in waves, and the analytical side is idle in the morning and overloaded in the afternoon. I assess registration, batching, workload and staffing together before anyone decides which of them is the cause.
- A new volume or sample type
A contract, a new sample type or a new tube arrives, and the current flow was designed for a different one. The review shows which steps absorb the change and which have to be redesigned.
- Before buying anything
A liquid handler, a track, a new analyzer or another position is on the table. A measured map of the current flow shows what the purchase would and would not change, and often finds cheaper changes first.
- After a move or a reorganization
The laboratory has new rooms, new people or a new service, and the handoffs that used to work by habit no longer do.
6 areas
What a review covers
- Reception and registration
What the requisition carries, what is checked at the door, what the system does and what the person does, and where samples wait between the two.
- Batching
How batches form, how big they are, when they start, and what breaks them: the late sample, the urgent one, the one in the wrong tube.
- Handoffs
Where a sample or a result passes from one person, bench or system to another, and what each handoff costs in waiting, walking and retyping.
- Tubes, racks and fixtures
Whether samples can move through the flow in the tube they arrive in, and where a decanting step, a rack change or a missing adapter adds work and a chance of error. When the part does not exist, I design and make it.
- Links to systems and instruments
Where the worklist comes from, how results get back, and which steps exist only because two systems disagree about what a sample is called.
- The room
Where the benches, the centrifuge and the workstation stand relative to the path the work takes, and how often people cross each other to do it.
5 deliverables
What you get
- Workflow map
The flow as it runs today, every step and handoff, including the ones that exist only because something else was inconvenient.
- Measured timings
Where the time goes, measured on the bench and from your own records rather than estimated in a meeting.
- Prioritized changes
A list of changes in the order I would make them, each with what it needs: a decision, a procedure, a fixture, a system change, a purchase.
- Changes that need no budget
A different batch size, a changed sequence, a moved workstation, a rack that stays with the sample. These usually come first.
- What belongs elsewhere
Where the answer is automation, a LIMS change or a new service, the review says so and hands over to that work, with the map already drawn.
2009 – 2024
Relevant experience
The clearest example is a workflow, not a machine. At Karolinska University Hospital, five people’s whole-blood preparation went to one operator on a liquid handler the department already owned, once the time a sample stays mixed had been measured and the steps reordered around it; the laboratory’s own turnaround figures came back at about half. The case is on the home page, and the account with the figures on the selected work page.
At ABC Labs the first document I wrote was the whole sample flow, in nine steps across five sample streams: requisition, reception and registration, preparation, analysis, technical evaluation, technical approval, medical approval and release, reporting, and the storage and disposal that follow. Writing the five streams side by side showed which steps they had to keep in common, and that document decided what the LIMS, the procedures and the quality system had to carry.
Some of the changes were to the room. I have moved the workstation nearest the door, because every workflow starts with a worklist; turned benches to face the fume hoods instead of lining the walls, so work moves in and out quickly; and placed one centrifuge centrally so that no bench has a better claim on it than another. None of it appeared in a budget, and all of it meant people stopped crossing each other’s paths.
3 steps
How the work runs
I start by watching the workflow, not by proposing a solution.
- UnderstandA free first conversation about where the time goes, then your procedures, floor plan and volume data read remotely, so the site time is spent watching rather than reading.
- Observe and mapA day or two on the bench through a whole working day, timings taken, the map drawn with the people who run the flow until they agree it is their laboratory.
- RecommendThe prioritized list of changes with what each needs, reviewed with you, and where asked, help putting the first ones into daily use.
The mapping and the report run remotely; the observation is on site. A review runs from a couple of days upward depending on the size of the operation and is quoted in writing before it starts; the commercial answers cover the rest.
Scope
Scope and responsibilities
A workflow review is not a purchase recommendation and not a project to stand up a new service. If the review finds that a liquid handler is the right answer, that becomes laboratory automation; if the system is where the time goes, LIMS requirements; if a new service has to be brought into routine, laboratory commissioning. The changes are yours to make, in your procedures and your document control; I help put them into use where you want me to.
Six services
First step
Discuss your workflow
Describe the flow in your own words: the sample types and roughly how many a day, where samples wait, who does what and when, and what you have tried. I will reply with the questions I need and tell you what I would look at first. The first conversation is free. The terms, travel and the other commercial answers are on the contact page. If you would rather not use a form, write to [email protected].
Contracting
- Consulting delivered through Ebihara Solutions (Sweden), a sole trader approved for F-skatt; organization and VAT numbers on every invoice.
- Your NDA signed and your document control followed; no professional indemnity insurance; laboratories in Sweden, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.