Future Aspects Of Medical Lab Technology

The future is honestly looking bright. There's a high demand for medical technologists due to the fact that the current workforce is aging and approaching retirement. Although automation is the way of the future, automation does not, in any way, eliminate the need for trained technologists to run those machines.

Future Aspects Of Medical Lab Technology

I’d say the future of the medical lab is automation given that the field, in general, is heading into an unprecedented shortage of workers due to an increase in health care utilization, an increase in folks retiring, and a decrease in students graduating from Medical lab science or medical lab technician programs. Most instrument areas of the lab are heavily automated and integrated with the LIS/EMR except microbiology, molecular, blood bank, and to some extent anatomical pathology/cytology. We’ve seen an increase in automation for basic blood banking with gel and solid-phase technology analyzers, but complex workups are still done using manual techniques.

Microbiology is seeing an increase in automation through rapid PCR detection systems and also an increase in analyzers that will perform susceptibility testing for and identification of bacterial organisms. I’ve also seen a couple of analyzers designed to automatically streak plates for microbiology workup, which is pretty cool. Anatomic pathology and cytology are just getting started with automation where I’m seeing an increase in labs that want to send patient information from the laboratory information system (LIS) to the instrument that makes slides for anatomic pathology. Making the slide making process automated decreases human error in the workflow. With all this increased automation comes an increased need to create interfaces so data can be exchanged between the instrument and the LIS. This process can be more difficult than you would expect depending on what you are working with.

Careers in the lab can include working on the bench at the tech level running tests in any number of departments depending on the size of the hospital, managing a lab or section of the lab in some fashion, working as a laboratory IT professional in a hospital setting where you would be responsible for the instrument interfaces, working outside the lab for an instrument manufacturer in some capacity, working for a LIS or other interface vendor, teaching at a university in a medical lab science or medical lab technician program, working in a public health laboratory in some capacity running tests or managing, or a number of other lab-related positions.

I expect pay to go up for the field in general as the number of qualified individuals decreases.

By:- Vikas Tiwari
Department of MLT

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